


Of Guns & Glory

by sowell



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Western, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-26
Updated: 2013-05-26
Packaged: 2017-12-13 01:17:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 10
Words: 32,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/818259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sowell/pseuds/sowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are murders going on in Naruto's town, and he needs Sasuke Uchiha's help to solve them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This work has now been illustrated and translated into Russian [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/839103/chapters/1598860%22). Thanks [Allariel](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Allariel/pseuds/Allariel)!

Naruto stared mournfully into his cup. It was almost empty. He drained the last of the whiskey, then sighed. No one came running to refill it, so he sighed again, a little louder. Nothing. He glanced around the room to catch sight of a familiar coif of pink.  
  
“Hey Sakura,” he called out. “A little help?”  
  
She didn’t even turn her head. She was listening with rapt green eyes to a local cowhand spilling some sob story about being fired off the Hyuuga ranch. The Hyuugas had the most prosperous operation for a hundred miles around, and Naruto had no doubt that if the cowhand had been fired, there'd been a reason for it. Anyway, his problems couldn’t possibly be any more important than the lack of whiskey in Naruto’s glass.  
  
“Hey  _Sakura_ ,” he said a little louder. “A little – ”  
  
Her eyes slid to his for a brief second, snapping with warning.  
  
“Shush,” Tsunade said, appearing in front of him with a bottle. “She’s working.”  
  
“Yeah, well I’m thirsty,” Naruto grumbled. “Who is that guy, anyway?”  
  
“Someone who’s about to bring some money into this place, which is more than I can say for you. You haven’t paid for a drink here in three years.”  
  
Naruto fingered the gold star on his shirt, launching a grin at Tsunade. “You wouldn’t make the sheriff pay for drinks, would you granny? That’s not a very nice way to say thank you to the man who keeps your town safe.”  
  
Tsunade snorted. “There hasn’t been any crime in this town since your father was in charge, and you know it - the only thing you do all day is drink and hassle my girls. You’ve far too much of your grandfather in you, and not nearly enough of your father.”  
  
Naruto just settled contentedly into his seat cushion and started on the freshly filled glass.  
  
Everyone knew Tsunade and Naruto’s granddad had had A Thing, and that Tsunade had been bitter ever since. Naruto wasn’t sure why, since it was clear that Tsunade had been the one that broke Jiraya’s heart and not the other way around.  
  
Although it may have had something to do with the number of times Tsunade had found Jiraiya in another woman’s bed.  
  
Still, Naruto could remember his grandfather following the saloon owner around like a puppy on a rope. When he’d been shot dead by a gunslinger with a grudge three years back, Tsunade hadn’t attended the funeral. But Sakura had whispered to Naruto that her employer had been drunk for three days straight, and that she had smashed every piece of glass the saloon owned.  
  
Tsunade was the closest thing Naruto had ever had to a mother, since his own mother had died during childbirth. A fact which didn’t stop him from ogling her cleavage whenever possible. At fifty years old, she was still one of the best-looking women he’d ever seen. He took a peek now, and received a sound smack to his temple for it.  
  
“God, Naruto,” Sakura huffed, appearing at his elbow. “Could you be any dumber? You almost scared him off.” She picked up Naruto’s new glass of whiskey and downed it, ignoring Naruto’s squawk of protest.  
  
Tsunade’s other girls were milling around, save for a few that had already found customers for the night. Shizune, Tsunade’s second-in-command, was coaxing something slow and sultry out of the saloon’s ancient piano, and Naruto lifted a hand to wave at her. She smiled back, nodding even though her hands were busy.  
  
Tsunade’s had been a staple of Konoha since the town was founded. Naruto supposed the saloon had had another name once, but now it was just Tsunade’s. Naruto had taken his first drink at the bar, and had lost his virginity to Shizune when he was thirteen. The workers were mostly girls without families, but Tsunade took care of them. Tsunade took care of everyone. You could measure the worth of a town by its whorehouse, Jiraiya had always said. Naruto liked that theory just fine.  
  
The lamps in the place were beginning to burn as the sun faded outside the window. Konoha was a good, solid town. Jiraiya had founded it and Naruto’s father had secured it, or so the story went. Naruto wouldn’t know. He hadn’t been born when Jiraiya set his spurs down in Konoha, and his father had died protecting Konoha from a raid before Naruto could form memories.  
  
The tale was legendary: twelve outlaws looking for a playground to call their own had ridden into Konoha nearly twenty-five years ago. They’d set about terrorizing the women, stealing horses and cattle, and starting fires wherever they could make wood burn. Minato Namikaze had taken down all twelve of them without a single Konoha casualty, save himself. He’d been fatally wounded, leaving his newborn son under Jiraiya’s care.  
  
Naruto had grown up hearing the story, running around the dusty streets, hiding under stoops, and looking for any opportunity to play a prank or two for attention. Jiraiya, for all his skill as a lawman, hadn’t exactly been a model father. Naruto had learned to ignore the whispers of the townspeople. It was a shame, they said, that Minato’s son was growing up so wild, so undisciplined. And his father such a hero, too.  
  
Naruto let his eyes flick around the bar, taking in everything. It was his town, now – had been since Jiraiya pinned the gold star on him at age twenty. Even though he’d grown up an orphan, Konoha was his home. It was in his blood, and he loved it.  
  
“Be careful,” he told Sakura, a sudden surge of protectiveness taking hold of him. “I don’t like the look of that cowhand. He’s a stranger.”  
  
There was a tiny smile on Sakura’s mouth. She dragged her frothy skirt up just far enough for Naruto to see the dainty pistol strapped to her thigh.  
  
“I always am,” she said.  
  
Naruto blinked. “Where the hell did you get that?”  
  
“I gave it to her,” Tsunade said calmly, wiping down the bar. “The girls need to be ready, especially with what happened in Suna.”  
  
Naruto’s mood darkened immediately. They all knew what had happened in Suna. A string of murders – five saloon girls killed in the last two months. No one arrested, no one suspected.  
  
“Do you even know how to use that thing?” he asked her.  
  
“Do you want me to demonstrate on you?” she answered sweetly.  
  
“Enough,” Tsunade broke in. “Your client is waiting, Sakura. Go on.”  
  
She tucked a stray hair into one of her jeweled pins and went, her skirt swaying behind her. Naruto watched.  
  
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay here with me, instead?” he called after her. “I’m the sheriff, you know.”  
  
She chuckled without turning around. They’d been playing this game for twenty years now, since the first time Naruto proposed at age four. She’d stopped trying to maim him years ago; he figured by the time they were both old and gray she might actually accept.  
  
He felt Tsunade’s eyes on him, and he turned his head.  
  
“What?” he asked.  
  
“You’re still green,” she said, “so I guess you’ve got an excuse. Lord knows your grandfather never learned. I don’t know how your father turned out as steady as he did, bless him.”  
  
She poked her finger into Naruto’s badge, pressing the gold-plated star to his chest. “Stop bragging, until you have something to brag about. Your father and your grandfather made a reputation for themselves, and you’ve inherited it. But reputation only goes so far. What happened in Suna could easily happen here.”  
  
Naruto scowled. “You don’t think I can protect Konoha?”  
  
“I think you’re young, and you’re new. Thanks to Minato, you’ve got a safe town. A prosperous one. It’s not a sure thing, though. You may not remember when there was chaos in these parts, but I do. You keep making all that noise, and you might find you’ve got a target branded on your forehead.”  
  
Naruto felt the hairs start to raise on his arms. “What do you know, granny? What’s going on?”  
  
Her mouth was a tight line. “There was a gunslinger in here last week. He left quietly enough, but just the fact that he felt safe enough to cross the Konoha border in broad daylight is a bad sign. Konoha’s enjoyed its peace, but it won’t do to take it for granted.”  
  
Naruto felt the first stirrings of annoyance. “I grew up watching Jiraiya run this town. I think I know how to take care of my own.”  
  
Tsunade’s eyes were pure skepticism. “Well, you’ve yet to prove it, brat. Until you do, stop acting like a fool. You don’t want to bring shame to the Namikaze name.”  
  
“My last name is Uzumaki,” Naruto told her shortly, and pushed off his stool. “It’s getting late. You know where to find me if I’m needed.”  
  
Tsunade was watching him with disapproval. Naruto’s stomach sank as he realized he’d most likely talked himself out of a few nights of free whiskey. He’d just jammed his hat on his head when a high-pitched scream from upstairs pierced through the cracks in the ceiling.  
  
 _Sakura_ , was his first thought. He was taking the steps three at a time before anyone else had managed a twitch, his six-shooter drawn.  
  
It wasn’t Sakura, though. She was standing in the door to her bedroom, clutching a faded sheet to her body and staring with wide eyes down the hall. Her cowhand was peering curiously over her shoulder.  
  
“Where?” Naruto said sharply, and she pointed.  
  
Ino, another of Tsunade’s girls, stumbled backwards out of the room at the end of the hall. Her face was chalky white. Naruto caught her before she fell, feeling her shake.  
  
“Hinata,” she breathed. “It’s Hinata.”


	2. Chapter 1

Under any other circumstances, Naruto figured Tsunade would be gloating right about now. As it was, she was leaning against the wall with crossed arms, eyes dry and flinty. He didn’t blame her.  
  
They’d all crowded into Tsunade's master suite, but Naruto could see the murder scene through the open doorway. The undertaker pulled the sheet up over Hinata Hyuuga’s face, draping her body in white before he and his assistant took her away. The ugly ring of purple around her neck disappeared along with her pale, bulging eyes. She’d been a pretty girl, shy and sweet, and Naruto felt his fists clench involuntarily as they covered up the gruesome evidence of how she’d died.  
  
The two men lifted up the swathed figure, leaving only a chalk outline behind.  
  
“You’re sure you didn’t see anything?” he asked Ino for the thousandth time, his voice rougher than he intended. “No one in the room with her?”  
  
If Ino resented the sharp tone, she didn’t show it. She was still pale and trembling, hands cupped around the mug of hot tea that Tsunade had brought her.  
  
She shook her head. “Nothing,” she whispered. “I just walked in and she was lying there. I thought she was asleep until I got to the bed, and...” her voice caught, and Sakura put a hand on her shoulder.  
  
“How about the last couple weeks? Any new customers? Suspicious faces?” Besides the fired cowhand, of course, who was already getting acquainted with one of the cells in Konoha’s tiny jail.  
  
Ino shook her head again. “None that I remember. Except…” she trailed off, and she and Sakura exchanged glances.  
  
“Tell me,” Naruto ordered.  
  
“Yesterday afternoon,” Sakura started slowly. “There was a new face. Had the look of a gunslinger. He only stayed for a few drinks, but…”  
  
“ _What_?” Tsunade said, pushing away from the wall. “Another one?  
  
“He didn’t cause any trouble,” Sakura said defensively. She sniffed. “Didn’t seem interested in any of the girls, either.”  
  
“We don’t serve gunslingers,” Tsunade said, in a voice that made Sakura shrink away. “Why wasn’t I told?”  
  
“He was handsome,” Ino said in a small voice. “And he seemed to have plenty of cash to spare. We just thought…”  
  
“No exceptions,” Tsunade snapped. “I thought I taught you girls better than that.”  
  
Naruto rubbed a tired hand over his face. “Did you at least get a name?”  
  
“Uchiha,” Sakura piped up hastily. “Or at least that’s what he said.”  
  
Naruto met Tsunade’s eyes over the girls’ heads. “Two gunslingers in as many weeks,” Tsunade speculated grimly. “Can’t be good.”

*

  
As luck would have it, Sasuke Uchiha hadn’t left town in the twenty-four hours since he’d shown himself at Tsunade’s.

Naruto knocked impatiently on the second floor suite of Konoha’s only hotel. The evening had grown into itself, and the moon was pouring dim light through the narrow windows. The night manager shifted nervously next to him, keys jangling against the buckle of his belt. After a few minutes of pounding, Naruto turned.

“Open it,” he said.

“I’m really not supposed to disturb the guests,” the manager pleaded. “If you’ll just wait until morning, I’m sure Mr. Uchiha will be awake and ready to discuss whatever – ”

“I’m the goddamn sheriff,” Naruto said in exasperation. “Just open the door, will you?”

The manager was twisting his fingers. “Please, if you’ll just – ”

He was interrupted by the door swinging open all on its own. Naruto found himself face-to-face with a long-barreled revolver, framed by two narrowed eyes.

“What?” Sasuke Uchiha said.

Naruto disliked him on sight. He looked soft. He had that pretty sort of face that women always fell for, then ended up strangled in their beds. His hair was  _ridiculous_ , sticking out every which way, and his suspenders hung by his thighs, like he’d been too lazy to dress properly. He had a snooty expression on said pretty face, and Naruto immediately started imagining what it would look like with a nice, fist-shaped black eye.

“Sasuke Uchiha?” he asked, even though he already knew.

The snooty, dumb-haired idiot tilted his head. He flicked dismissive eyes up and down Naruto’s belligerent stance. “Depends. Who’s asking?”

Asshole. Naruto shifted so his sheriff’s star peaked out from his jacket. “I am. I’ll be taking you down to the station. I’ve got a few questions for you.”

The silver-plated revolver had been creeping down, but it snapped back to attention at those words. The eyes narrowed even further. Naruto felt his temper start to heat up.

“Any particular reason?”

“There’s been a murder,” Naruto said shortly. “And you’re a suspect. You’re coming with me.”

Naruto saw the gunfighter’s expression sharpen briefly, but his stance seemed to relax. He leaned a shoulder against the door frame, gun never wavering.

“Sad story,” he remarked, voice laced through with insolence. “But unless you’ve got a reason for suspecting me, I don’t see why I should go anywhere.”

Two black eyes, and a few welts to go with it, Naruto decided. “You don’t have to see a reason. You just have to put that gun down and come with me.”

“I don’t take orders. Especially from small town lawmen who wake me up in the middle of the night.”

Naruto’s fist was  _aching_  with the urge to pop him in the mouth. “I’m the sheriff of this small town,” he snapped, “and as long as you’re here you’ll damn well obey every order I give.”

Uchiha was eyeing Naruto’s gold star with something like scorn. “I guess they really do give out badges to anyone in these parts,” he said. Then he slammed the door in Naruto’s face.

Naruto stared at it for a minute, speechless with outrage. He turned to order the clerk to open the door again, but the little weasel had disappeared sometime during the confrontation.

“Don’t wake me again,” drifted through the door, and Naruto felt his nails cutting into the skin of his palms. He figured he had three options: 1) Shoot the lock off. 2) Holler at the top of his lungs until Uchiha got annoyed enough to cooperate. 3) Come back in the morning.

He debated the first option for a few delicious moments, hand on his gun belt. Several doors in the hallway had creaked open, though, sleepy faces peering out. He wasn’t prepared to start an all-out gun fight with a stranger where civilians could get hurt. And given how testy the gunfighter seemed, the second option might end in violence, too. He dropped his hand and sighed.

He banged on the door for good measure. “I’ll be back in the morning,” he yelled. “Don’t you go anywhere, Uchiha.”

He thought he heard a faint snort before he turned away.

*

  
The hotel’s owner was already up and working when Naruto pushed his way through the door the next morning. He was cranky, he hadn’t slept a wink, and he was spoiling for a fight. Hinata’s face had haunted his dreams, in live form and dead. She’d only been nineteen, Naruto realized. The first thing he’d seen when he walked into town was the notice of her death, plastered across the daily newsletter. The whole town would know by now.

Between grief, frustration, and an anger at the gunfighter that refused to simmer, it had been a rough night. He’d finally broken into Jiraiya’s whiskey stash, hoping it would at least put him under for a few hours. It had only made him feel worse, and now he had a headache on top of everything else.

He’d had better mornings in his lifetime.

He slammed his hand down on the bell out of pure orneriness, but Iruka only glanced up through wire-rimmed glasses.

“I hear you’ve been terrorizing the night manager,” he said mildly.

“The night manager’s an idiot,” Naruto said bluntly. “Where is he?”

“The manager? I sent him home to sleep, but…”

“Uchiha,” Naruto bit out. “Is he in his room?”

Iruka looked amused for some reason that Naruto couldn’t fathom. He slid a folded piece of paper across the desk. It was embossed with lacy curls, and there was an odd-looking fan printed in the corner, round and colorful.

_Tell the idiot sheriff I had things to do._

  
Naruto swore for a long time, so loudly and violently that the few guests lounging in the lobby turned to stare.

Iruka was definitely amused now. “I hear I missed quite a show.”

“Hinata’s dead,” Naruto said. “I don’t think it’s funny.”

Iruka sobered immediately. “No,” he said softly. “Neither do I.”

“Shit,” Naruto said wearily, sinking down onto a nearby couch. “Just…shit.”

He felt the cushion dip next to him, and then Iruka’s hand touched his shoulder. “It’s all right,” he said soothingly. “You’ll figure it out.”

“I’m doing a shitty job so far,” Naruto said mournfully. “This wasn’t supposed to happen here.”

Naruto supposed Iruka had opened a hotel due to his propensity for taking in strays. While everyone else had been quietly stepping around the grubby child that Naruto used to be, Iruka had always invited him in and fed him, cleaned him up. Naruto took the same comfort from him now, even though, as sheriff, he should really be the one doing the comforting.

Iruka was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was low and assured. “You’re Jiraiya’s grandson,” he said. “You’re Minato’s son. I have faith in you.”

Well, fuck.

“I need to know everything,” Naruto said, hearing his voice strengthen. “Every stranger that’s come through in the last few weeks, everyone you’ve seen, everything you’ve heard. Can you help me?”

Iruka stood up, brushing off his trousers. “It will take a while, but I’ll go through the books. In the meantime, I’d speak with Doc.”

  
Naruto’s brow furrowed. “Our Doc? The drunk one?”

  
“Yup. Kakashi may be a little...off, but he’s been in this town almost as long as Tsunade. He sees more than he lets on.”

“And the gunfighter?”

“His things are still here – he hasn’t left town. I'll send a messenger if he comes back.”

“Uchiha.” Naruto turned the name around in his mouth. “Ever heard of him before?”

“Talk to Kakashi,” Iruka said firmly. “He’ll know.”

*

  
It was a few hours before Naruto finally got around to Kakashi’s office. He stopped at the Hyuuga ranch first, only to be coldly turned away. He’d known that Hinata had had a falling out with her family a few years back – it was how she’d ended up at Tsunade’s, after all – but he hadn’t realized the rift went quite so deep. Hiashi Hyuuga had only looked at him out of frigid eyes when he gave his condolences. The undertaker had informed him afterward that the family had yet to claim the body.

Konoha would have to bury Hinata Hyuuga on its own.

He’d seen Neji – the eldest cousin – lurking in the background. He’d stayed unobtrusively silent, watching Naruto out of the pale, eerie eyes that were the Hyuuga trademark. The Hyuugas were an strange bunch. They kept to themselves, only coming into town to use the bank and the post office. Money could make a person odd, Naruto figured. Unpleasant as well. Naruto had attended school with Neji Hyuuga in Konoha's tiny schoolhouse when they were both boys. Even as a child, Neji had rarely deigned to speak with his peers. The Hyuugas had pulled him out for private tutoring at age eight, and Hinata had never been taught outside the home at all. Naruto hadn't even known the Hyuugas had a daughter until Hinata appeared in Tsunade's, cast out

After the Hyuugas, his next stop was the jail. He still had a fired cowhand to question. The man was doing push-ups when Naruto walked into the office. He’d immediately jumped to his feet and offered a salute.

“I’m not a navy captain,” Naruto said sharply. “I just want to ask you some questions.”

“Yes, sir!” the cowhand replied, and Naruto repressed a snarl.

Within five minutes Naruto found out the following:

1) The cowhand went by the unlikely name of Rock Lee.  
2) He’d come to the frontier on his own, looking to start a ranch. He apparently had a passion for raising cattle.  
3) He’d been fired for making several radical changes to the Hyuuga operations without permission. (“Cows are happier creatures when you sing to them each morning! I only had the ranch’s best interests in mind!”)  
4) Despite never having actually  _slept_  with Sakura, he’d apparently fallen madly in love with her in the few minutes he’d been exposed to her charm.

“She’s all that’s beautiful and good,” he declared. “She’s a delicate blossom, a queenly example of womanhood, the most perfect creature to ever – ”

“Leave today,” Naruto interrupted him. “Don’t come back to Konoha, and there won’t be any trouble between us.” He’d already determined that Lee was no threat, but he was fairly certain he’d go insane if he had to listen to the man’s jabbering on a daily basis.

That stopped Lee’s impassioned love speech, but only for a moment. There was true apology in his voice when he continued. “I am sorry, Sheriff Naruto, but I cannot do that. Not until Sakura has agreed to give me her hand in marriage.”

Naruto left the jail with an even bigger headache than when he’d arrived. He was feeling less than charitable when he knocked on the door to Kakashi’s office.

“Sheriff.” Kakashi was all smiles. At least, Naruto assumed he was. As far as Naruto knew, no one had ever seen beneath the black kerchief he wore across his mouth at all times.

Kakashi was like no doctor Naruto had ever met. He was drunk more than half the time, his house was cluttered with stacks of novels whose titles made Naruto blush, and between the kerchief and the eye patch that never came off, it was nearly impossible to tell what he was thinking. With his shock of gray hair, he could have been thirty or sixty. He was rumored to have lost the eye in a gunfight, although he never confirmed or denied.

He was also rumored to have a perfect memory. One glance at a written page and he could recite it back without error. Naruto didn’t know if that was true, either, but he did know that the spaces in Kakashi’s house not occupied by pornography were crammed full of medical texts. He’d saved more than one life in Konoha, and the people trusted him. That was enough for Naruto.

“Why are you so cheerful?” Naruto grumbled. “There’s a dead girl, you know.”

“I heard,” Kakashi said, slightly more grave. “A shame.”

“Yeah, well. I need to talk to you.”

“Let me guess,” Kakashi said comfortably, settling into a chair. “Sasuke Uchiha.”

Naruto stumbled a little. “What, you already heard?”

Kakashi shrugged, but his visible eye was twinkling. “Small town, sheriff.”

Naruto slid into the chair opposite from him, leaning forward. “What do you know?”

“A few rumors,” he said, in a tone that meant he knew much more than that.

“Come on,” Naruto said impatiently. “This is important.”

“Well now, it’s awfully hard to remember when my throat’s so dry,” Kakashi said in a sad voice.

"You've got to be kidding."

"Whiskey helps," Kakashi added, in case Naruto hadn't gotten the message the first time. Damn drunk doctor, Naruto thought wearily.

“Fine,” he said. “Let’s go.”

 

*

  
The moon was floating high when Naruto finally stumbled out of Tsunade’s saloon. The place had been quiet as death – the townspeople scared to leave their houses, Tsunade tense and grim, the rest of the girls huddled nervously in a corner. It didn’t make for a comfortable situation, but it meant he and Kakashi could speak freely without the threat of strangers listening in.

And speak they had. It turned out Iruka was right – Kakashi knew things. He knew far more about Sasuke Uchiha than Naruto had ever hoped to learn. He could barely walk straight as he stumbled up the steps to his porch. He wasn’t sure if it was from too much alcohol or from too much information spinning in his head.

His house – his father’s house, Jiraiya’s house – was a big, three-story affair. Jiraiya had always boasted that he’d built it up with his own bare hands, but given how lazy Jiraiya was, Naruto thought it more likely that he’d sat back and given instructions while some local ranchers did the dirty work.

He loved the house, though. The stairs creaked and the paint was chipping. The woodwork was frayed with age, and the portraits of his mother and father lining the walls had begun to take on a yellow cast. It was the only place in the world he’d ever wanted to live.

He stripped the day’s clothes as he went – hat hung on the hook by the door, duster draped over a dining room chair, jacket tossed on the faded couch. He loosened his suspenders, shook the dust from his hair, rolled his shoulders. He was exhausted.

It wasn’t until he was two steps into his bedroom that he realized something was off. There was an oil lamp lit, burning steadily in the corner. His most expensive bottle of whiskey was uncorked on the card table, two empty glasses standing on either side of it like sentinels. And there was a pair of boots, pointed and black with gleaming spurs, planted directly on top of the wooden surface.

Sasuke Uchiha was slouched in Naruto’s favorite chair, hat tipped low over his eyes.

“Welcome home, Sheriff,” he said. “I think it’s time we talked.”


	3. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains non-con.

Naruto’s hand went immediately to his gun belt, still slung around his hips. By the time his fingers touched leather, Sasuke had drawn. Naruto’s eyes could barely follow the speed of the movement.  
  
His revolver shone in the low lamp light, throwing the shallow carvings on the silver into dramatic relief. “I don’t think so,” the gunslinger said. Naruto no longer had any doubt he was, indeed, a gunslinger. No law-abiding citizen could draw like that. “I’m ready to talk, but it’s going to be on my terms.”  
  
“Fuck you,” Naruto said.  
  
Naruto could see his curving smile beneath the wide brim of his hat. It wasn’t what Naruto would call a pleasant smile. It was barely a quirk – arrogant and humorless. He indicated a chair with the barrel of his gun.  
  
“Have a seat.” The tone said it wasn’t a request. Naruto had no choice but to obey.  
  
“I hear you’ve been asking questions about me,” he said. Naruto could see his eyes now, sharp and focused, darker than even the shadows in the room.  
  
“I would have asked you directly,” Naruto said tightly, “but you seemed busy.”  
  
Sasuke Uchiha chuckled, and it wasn’t any warmer than his smile. “Still,” he said. “It’s rude to ask around about a man behind his back.”  
  
Naruto gritted his teeth. “Well, we’re face to face now, so let me ask you – where were you two nights ago when Hinata Hyuuga was being murdered?”  
  
“Easy,” the gunfighter said comfortably. “In my room, sleeping.”  
  
“Any back-up for that?” Naruto asked skeptically. “Any alibi?”  
  
“None.”  
  
Naruto blinked. “You’re not even going to try and clear yourself?”  
  
“Not interested. I’m much more interested in what you learned about me.”  
  
Naruto shifted. “Nothing of consequence.”  
  
The gunfighter raised a thin brow. “I doubt that.” He reached out a pale hand and poured them each a drink. Naruto warily watched the amber liquid splash from bottle to glass.  
  
“I’m guessing you find it easier to talk over drinks,” Sasuke said. “Most people do.”  
  
“You first,” Naruto said rudely.   
  
Sasuke shrugged. He took a long swallow. Naruto watched him carefully, but he didn’t keel over dead, so he supposed the whiskey wasn’t poisoned. Or if it was, at least he and the gunfighter were going down together.  
  
He sipped, never taking his eyes off Sasuke. The man was mesmerizing. Infuriating, but mesmerizing. Naruto wasn’t sure if that face belonged on some fancy European statue or locked behind bars in a looney bin. The dark eyes gave nothing away.  
  
Naruto wondered – if he didn’t turn out to be the murderer, of course – if Sasuke would teach him to draw like that.  
  
He shook his head sharply. Stupid thought.  
  
“Something wrong?” Sasuke sounded amused again. Asshole.  
  
“You’re chasing your brother,” Naruto said suddenly, to clear the weird static suddenly ricocheting in his brain. “You have been for five years, without success.”  
  
Sasuke’s smile disappeared immediately. “So you learned something after all,” he said, cool and even.  
  
“He was here in this town last week, and that’s why you’re here now.”  
  
Sasuke tipped his glass back, pouring the rest of the whiskey down his throat. He set his glass down with just a hint too much force and poured himself another round. Jiraiya’s old stash was fast disappearing. The alcohol brought the smallest bit of color to the gunfighter’s carved cheeks, a dangerous glitter to his eyes. He looked even more threatening.  
  
Naruto continued. “He went insane and killed your parents when you were still a boy. Took them both out but left you alive. People say you’re following in his footsteps, that you’re insane, too.”  
  
“You learned quite a lot,” Sasuke said softly. “Keep going.”  
  
Naruto did, if only because he could see it unsettled the other man. Sasuke had set the gun down on the table when he poured the drinks, although Naruto had no doubt he could take it up again in an instant. Still, he was feeling reckless enough and angry enough to keep talking.  
  
“People say you’re unnatural. Cold. You won your first gunfight when you were twelve and you’ve killed twenty-three men since. You’ve got a price on your head big enough to buy three ranches.” Long lashes swept down. Sasuke looked almost pleased, so Naruto added, “It’s almost as big as your brother’s.”  
  
Black eyes snapped up again, crackling with temper. “What else?”  
  
“That’s not enough?” Naruto said in disbelief.  
  
“I don’t believe I heard a motivation for strangling a whore in there.”  
  
“They say you’ll step over anyone to get to your older brother. Maybe Hinata was in the way.”  
  
“Or maybe I just felt like it,” Sasuke said sharply. “I’m insane, right?”  
  
Somehow, Naruto doubted that. Sasuke Uchiha seemed like he could be icy, angry, and volatile all at once, but he didn’t seem like he was lacking a brain.  
  
“If standing up for your family makes you insane,” he said uncomfortably, “then my jails would be a lot more crowded.”  
  
Sasuke’s eyes jerked to his face, and Naruto dropped his eyes under the intensity of the stare. “I learned about you, too, sheriff,” he said abruptly.  
  
“Oh yeah?” Naruto answered, tilting his chin.  
  
“Orphaned son of the town’s hero, always trying to live up to his father’s reputation. Sad, really. To be fighting for such an inconsequential thing.”  
  
Oh, this asshole was  _dead_. “Says the outlaw,” Naruto snapped. “Konoha’s more important than any stupid vendetta could ever be. At least I’m doing something worthwhile.”  
  
“Asshole,” he added, when Sasuke didn’t respond.  
  
“You’re a moron,” Sasuke said frankly. “I don’t know how you think this town will last more than a year with you in charge. You’re useless.”  
  
“ _What_?” Naruto was so pissed he could barely get the word out. He pushed himself to his feet, only to stumble sideways. He hadn’t had that much whiskey, had he?  
  
“I barely had to drop your name, and the whole story came spilling out,” Sasuke continued, and his voice was like a lash. “You may be the sheriff, but the people don’t trust you. They don’t think you can hold on to what your father built. How does that feel?”  
  
Naruto’s fingers bit into the edge of the table.  
  
Sasuke’s tirade went on mercilessly. “They’re saying this murder is just the beginning. It won’t be long before there’s another, and then another, and then Konoha will be in chaos all over again. Like your family had never been.”  
  
“Shut up,” Naruto snarled. He took a threatening step forward, but gravity betrayed him again. He swayed, caught the table.  
  
“You,” he tried to say, but his tongue wouldn’t cooperate. Everything was suddenly spinning. It almost felt like…  
  
“No,” he said weakly, trying to order his thoughts. “The whiskey…you drank…you…”  
  
“You forgot to check the glass,” Sasuke said simply, and then Naruto was crumpling.  
  
He felt the vibration as his body hit the floor, but he felt no pain. He was numb.  _Drugged_ … was the only thought trailing sluggishly through his brain. He couldn’t make his mouth say it, though.  
  
Two dark boots approached. From his tilted view of the room, Naruto saw the silver spurs flicker in the lamp light. He sensed a body looming over him, and then his vision faded out.  
  


*

  
Naruto jerked as something slapped lightly at his cheek. He tried to open his eyes, but it felt like there were weights tied to the lids.  
  
“Come on,” a voice said impatiently. “Nap time’s over.”  
  
Naruto went to bat at the irritating fingers, only to find he couldn’t move his hand. Or the rest of his body, for that matter. He was tied upright, strapped to a wooden chair from the solid feel of it.  
  
He felt cool hands bracketing his cheeks, tipping his face upward. Light pulsed against his closed eyelids.  
  
“You’re awake,” the voice concluded.  
  
Naruto’s chin hit his sternum as his face was unceremoniously dropped. “What did you give me?” he mumbled. Everything in his body felt like it was waterlogged – heavy and slow.  
  
“It’s just a healthy dose of laudanum. You’ll be fine in eight hours or so.” Naruto’s brain finally connected voice to man. “Unless I decide to put a bullet between your eyes, of course,” Sasuke concluded smoothly.  
  
“Asshole,” Naruto said, hoping it wasn’t too slurred for the gunfighter to understand.  
  
“Now,” Sasuke said. He pulled Naruto’s head upright again with a gentle fist full of hair, and the room came into a dizzy sort of focus. The edges were still blurry, but Naruto could make out the familiar shape of his bed and his dresser. Still in his bedroom, then.  
  
“We weren’t finished talking,” he continued. “I’m interested in the murder. Who else you suspect.”  
  
Naruto made his mouth form words. “Just you.”  
  
“Because I’m a gunfighter.”  
  
“ ’Cause you’re a  _prick_.”  
  
Sasuke was very close. Naruto could feel heat radiating from his body. “Maybe,” Sasuke said. “But there must be someone else.”  
  
Iruka had given Naruto a list of strangers that had come and gone in the last few weeks. Mostly drifters, no one of note besides the Uchiha brothers. Naruto would be damned before he shared any more information with Sasuke Uchiha, though. He stayed silent.  
  
“It’s not smart to be stubborn when you’re at someone else’s mercy.” Sasuke’s voice was even, but there was a warning note in it. There was something about the way he said it that sounded wrong – sounded  _intimate_  – and Naruto shivered.  
  
“I could do anything to you right now, and you couldn’t do a damn thing about it. I could do anything to your  _town_ , and you’d be helpless.”  
  
Naruto opened his eyes at that. He sought out the Uchiha’s black ones, managed to focus on them after a second.  
  
“You hurt anyone else, and I’ll kill you,” he said, as slowly and clearly as he could manage.  
  
The fist tightened in his hair, and Naruto winced. “You’ve decided it’s me, then,” Sasuke responded. His voice was oddly toneless.  
  
Naruto’s neck was stretched back at a strange angle. It made it even harder to speak. He licked his lips. “You never denied it.”  
  
“I never admitted it,” Sasuke corrected.  
  
“Are you admitting it now?” Naruto asked. He wasn’t quite sure what he wanted the answer to be. If it was ‘no’ then he was still back where he started; one dead girl, no suspects. If it was ‘yes’ that meant he was at the mercy of a killer, and probably wouldn’t make it through the night.  
  
Luckily, or unluckily, Sasuke didn’t answer at all.  
  
“Have you considered that it could be one of your own?” he mused instead. “A Konoha citizen with a temper?”  
  
“No,” Naruto said immediately, even though Neji’s silent face flashed through his brain. If he started believing that, he might just up and go insane himself.  
  
“You’re very naïve.”  
  
Naruto blinked, and Sasuke’s face was right in front of him. He felt his own heart beating unnaturally fast.  
  
“Too naïve to be a lawman. You didn’t even get around to half the rumors they say about me. Is it because you haven’t heard them, or because you’re too squeamish to repeat them?”  
  
“It’s because I don’t believe them,” Naruto said. He felt like the walls were pressing in on him. The drug was screwing with his perception. He couldn’t tell how much time had passed, how close Sasuke was, if his limbs were actually tied or just paralyzed.  
  
“That could be a mistake,” Sasuke said in a low voice. “What don’t you believe?”  
  
“That you’re a sorcerer,” Naruto said hoarsely. “That you win by hypnotizing your opponent with your eyes.”  
  
“I’ve heard that,” Sasuke said evenly. “What else?”  
  
“That the only reason you can draw so fast is because you made a deal with Satan. Your soul for the speed to beat your brother.” Naruto wasn’t exactly sure when Sasuke had begun rubbing small circles on his hip. It felt better than it had any right to feel, trussed up as he was.  
  
“Sounds like a smart bargain. What else have you heard?”  
  
Sasuke’s voice was a hypnotic hum in the stuffy heat of the room. If Naruto closed his eyes and just drifted off to sleep, he was sure this would all disappear. It was all a dream, and he’d wake tomorrow to find Hinata alive and Konoha safe and the name Uchiha nothing but a dark invention from one too many rounds at Tsunade’s.  
  
Sasuke’s hands tightened painfully in his hair, and Naruto’s eyes flew open again. “What else?” he repeated, the patience in his voice a contrast to his punishing fingers.  
  
“You charm snakes,” Naruto rasped. “You make them do what you want.”  
  
Sasuke chuckled, a low sound that sent vibrations all through Naruto’s body. “Seems like a fairly useless talent,” he said. “What else?”  
  
Naruto closed his eyes again, because there was something else all right, but he was damned if he was going to repeat it. He felt Sasuke tugging his head backwards even further, felt warm breath touching his cheek. He thought Sasuke might be kneeling next to him now, but that seemed strange.  
  
“What else?” Sasuke said softly, and Naruto squeezed his eyes tight to block out all the light. He wished he could do the same to all the sounds in the room. The drug was thickening his brain, but it was making his senses even sharper than usual. He could hear the dull ticking of the clock on the wall, smell the whiskey on Sasuke’s breath, feel the pressure of Sasuke’s fingers against his hip, rubbing with excruciating sensitivity.  
  
“I don’t think that’s it,” Sasuke said, his voice nothing but wisp of sound. “What else did you hear?”  
  
Now Sasuke’s palm was sliding in a firm line across Naruto’s abdomen, and there was no way Naruto could stop the word from spilling from his lips.  
  
“Sodomy,” he whispered.  
  
Sasuke paused only for a moment, maybe less. “Well now,” he drawled, and there was a layer of iron in his voice that hadn’t been there before. “How fascinating. Sodomy’s against the law in these parts – isn’t that right, sheriff?”  
  
Naruto jumped as he felt five long fingers work their way between his shirt and his belt, tugging. His shirttails slid from his pants with a brisk sound, and then he felt skin against his own flesh, burning.  
  
“Quit it,” he tried to order, but his tongue wouldn’t let it be anything more than a slurred plea. He twisted against the ropes, but he was good and tied.  
  
Sasuke didn’t answer. Fingers dipped into his hip bones, traced the muscles in his stomach, danced over each nipple. Sasuke had loosened the grip on his hair at some point, and Naruto had to use all his strength to keep his own chin from touching his chest. Sasuke was testing him like Naruto tested a horse before purchase, and he wasn’t sure if he was more angry or humiliated. His palms were rough and calloused, and every stroke sent a skitter of sensation down Naruto’s spine.  
  
Naruto tried to keep his breathing even as Sasuke slid his fingers beneath the leather of Naruto’s belt. His thumbs flicked open the metal clasps, and Naruto could sense the tension in the gunfighter’s limbs. Naruto swallowed, attempted another protest, but the fingers had started loosening the laces at the front of his trousers, and it was a relief. It lifted the pressure from the erection he hadn’t even noticed. Horror fought with pleasure as he realized he was reacting to a man.  
  
“Stop,” he said, hearing a bit of panic creep into his voice. “Cut it out, you sick sonofa – ” Another tug and his erection was free. Sasuke trailed two fingers up the underside of Naruto’s cock, and Naruto’s voice choked off into nothing.  
  
“Are you sure you want me to stop?” The voice was low and amused, and Naruto wished he could shoot him dead on the spot. “It doesn’t seem like it.”   
  
The drug, he told himself desperately. It was the drug and nothing else. He wasn’t queer, he wasn’t odd, he wasn’t a damn sodomist, he just –   
  
Sasuke was exploring his length with light fingertips. He felt the cool air rush over him, felt his hips jerk involuntarily as Sasuke wrapped a hand around him. The fist started to move over his flesh, maddeningly slow, and Naruto groaned. Sasuke forced his chin up with one hand and pressed his mouth against the hollow of Naruto’s throat.  
  
Naruto opened his eyes for the first time, made himself look at the ceiling. He could ignore this; he just had to concentrate on other things. The room was a blur of soft colors and flickering light, but he forced his eyes to focus on the tattered lace of the curtains, the sharp outline of the oil lamp, the hunting rifle hung carelessly on the wall. His eyes darted from corner to corner, looking for a distraction – the dingy window, his mother’s pewter tea set, the creaky sofa…  
  
It was no use. A man’s lips were on his neck and a man’s fingers were around his cock, and all Naruto could do was feel his body tighten under the easy torture.  
  
He wasn’t sure when he’d started making noises – moans and whispers and tortured grunts. Sasuke’s fingers were moving faster now, and Naruto felt himself getting harder and harder in his tormentor’s commanding hands. The gunfighter was still lavishing attention with his mouth on the same spot, and Naruto saw white as the sucking pressure passed from pain to pleasure and back again. He’d have a mark there when it was all over.  
  
He was thrusting his pelvis upward in desperate little jerks, meeting Sasuke’s strokes with as much reciprocation as the ropes would allow. The movement was frantic now; all rhythm had fled. The room had become unbearably hot, and Naruto heard his own voice panting in the still air.  
  
The pressure around his cock increased the slightest bit. Sasuke jerked his fist upwards once more, and then Naruto came with a cry. His body went rigid as he emptied his seed out all over the front of his stomach, and then he slumped down, ears ringing. He felt his erection softening in increments, beneath Sasuke’s slowing fingers. He stayed there for a hazy moment, waiting for the world to stop turning colors.  
  
Naruto didn’t remember when Uchiha had moved his mouth. Sasuke's face was pressed into the clammy skin of Naruto's neck, and Naruto felt him exhaling in jerky intervals.  
  
Naruto’s brain was telling him to sleep, his body boneless and sated. He fought it. He concentrated on the scratchy-soft hair tickling the underside of his chin, on Sasuke’s slowing inhalations. He focused his thoughts, very carefully.  
  
“Next time I see you,” he said, voice clear and deadly, “I’m going to kill you.”  
  
Sasuke moved. He lifted his head, and Naruto saw his mouth was as swollen as Naruto’s neck must be. His eyes were black and dazed.  
  
“Maybe,” he said.  
  
“Not maybe,” Naruto answered. He was beginning to shiver as the heat in his body dissipated.  
  
“Next time, then,” the gunfighter answered. Something moved in the corner of Naruto’s vision, and then pain exploded in the back of his skull. He had a second to process his own outrage, and then everything went black.

  
*

  
Naruto woke to the sky falling. Or at least, he assumed the sky was falling. Only the apocalypse could make so much damn ruckus so early in the morning.  
  
He moved his head to the side, then winced. He hurt all over. It felt like a hangover, only worse. His stomach was twisted into knots, his mouth was dry and tacky all at once, and it felt like his head was expanding from the inside out. He fumbled around the back of his skull to feel a bullet-sized lump, dried blood surrounding it. That fucking gunfighter had pistol-whipped him.  
  
He tried moving, ignoring the protest of his stomach. He was flopped face down on his quilt, boots hanging over the edge. His whole front side felt stiff and sticky, and the night suddenly came back in a rush.  
  
He vomited over the side of his bed.  
  
The pounding wouldn’t stop, and he realized it was coming from outside. Someone was banging on his door.  
  
He stumbled over to the window rather than hazarding the stairs. He shoved it open so hard he was surprised it didn’t shatter.  
  
“What?” he croaked out.  
  


Iruka stared up at him from the ground, eyes dark with grief. “You’ve got to come. Another girl’s been murdered.”


	4. Chapter 3

Sakura’s eyes were red. “She’s been crying all morning,” Ino whispered. “Ever since she found her.”  
  
Naruto’s headache had grown steadily worse. He’d arrived at the saloon in time to see Tsunade kneeling by Shizune’s body, one hand touching her friend’s cheek. That had been right before the undertaker covered Shizune’s face, just like Hinata.  
  
Naruto wished he could throw up again, but his stomach was empty. Shizune had been a constant presence in Tsunade’s as long as he could remember – filling the place with music, always ready with a wink and a smile. She hadn’t been the youngest girl in the place – older than Naruto himself – but she was far, far too young to be dead. Sakura had found her, the same way Ino had found Hinata. Hand-shaped bruises around her neck, eyes bulging, face discolored.  
  
And Naruto had been tied to a chair in his own bedroom, letting a gunslinger rape him. He wasn’t sure he’d ever felt quite so worthless.  
  
What time had Sasuke left? Kakashi thought Shizune must have been murdered in the early morning hours, sometime around 4AM. No one remembered seeing her leave, no one remembered who’d gone with her.  
  
Naruto thought he recalled darkness out his bedroom window before Sasuke knocked him out, but he couldn’t be sure. He’d been drugged, and the whole night had a hazy film over it.  
  
“This stops,” he told Tsunade in a low voice. “You close down until it’s solved.”  
  
“I agree,” she said calmly. “It’s not that simple, though. This isn’t just a business for them. This is where they live, eat, and sleep. This is their home. If you turn them out they’ll have no place else to go.”  
  
Her eyes were clear, dry, and totally dead. Shizune had been her business partner and her confidante, and Naruto didn’t know what to say to make it better.  
  
“They can’t stay here,” he said, frustrated. “They can’t. It’s not safe, it’s not smart, it’s – ”  
  
Tsunade gripped his arm and he broke off. “Moving them won’t help. If there’s a killer in Konoha, he’ll find them no matter what.” She pinned him with a frigid look, and for the first time, Naruto could see the grief in her, bubbling under the surface. He thought of Sasuke’s dark eyes again, of his fingers, stroking. He wanted to break something.  
  
“We’ll just have to be more careful,” Tsunade said. “All of us.”  
  


*

  
Days passed. Naruto kept his own counsel. He went from his house to his office every day, and back again – nowhere else.  
  
He pored over the list that Iruka had given him. There’d been a trio strangers who came from the West, but they’d departed almost a week before Hinata was killed. Two gunfighters traveling together had been spotted the next town over, but unlike the Uchiha brothers, they'd given Konoha a wide berth. There was Sakura’s cowhand, and a dozen others like him. Only two had spent the night in Konoha, and the timing had been wrong for both of them.   
  
 _And Neji_ , Naruto’s mind urged.  _There was always Neji_. He ignored it. He wouldn’t suspect Konoha citizens. He wouldn’t believe it until he was forced to. Besides, Neji may have had a grudge against Hinata, but he had no reason in the world to want Shizune dead.  
  
Unless there was more than one killer. The idea made Naruto’s head spin. He’d never in his life wished he lived in a city. But at least in a city there would be some help – cities had newspapers and police forces and meddling government bodies. Out here, there was nothing. Naruto had posted a letter to the governor days ago, but by the time he heard back, every girl in the town could be dead.  
  
Then there were the Uchiha brothers. The timeline was wrong for Itachi Uchiha to have touched either girl, but Sasuke was still a likely candidate. The  _most_  likely candidate, Naruto forced himself to acknowledge.  
  
He wasn’t sure why the admission rankled so much. Maybe because he’d been so close to the gunslinger and let him get away. Maybe because he could still remember the way those hands felt on him, and the memory made his whole body burn.  
  
Either way, he promised himself, next time he saw Sasuke Uchiha, it would end with a bullet between the gunslinger’s eyes.  
  
There were only two problems with that that he could see. First off, gunslingers weren’t generally too easy to kill. Secondly, Uchiha had vanished. Gone, Iruka had informed Naruto when he came to tell him about Shizune. Money left at the desk, bags disappeared. No one had seen or heard him leave. Naruto wanted to put his fist through a wall.  
  
 _I’ll find him_ , he promised himself grimly. The gunslinger had agreed that there would be a next time between them. Besides, he didn’t think Sasuke had gone far. He could almost feel the dark eyes on him as he went about his business every day. He went back and forth to his office, and kept his gun ready.  
  


*

  
Naruto had grown used to seeing Rock Lee’s cheerful face between the bars of the town jail. He had no real reason to still be holding him. Shizune had been murdered while Lee was safely locked away, and Naruto doubted Lee would be a very effective strangler anyway. He’d yelped in protest when Naruto squashed a cockroach.  
  
“Will you leave Sakura alone?” Naruto asked patiently, repeatedly. He figured Tsunade's girls had been through enough. They didn’t need an oddly-attired stalker hanging around, proclaiming his undying love for Sakura.  
  
Every day, however, Lee’s answer was the same. “I cannot leave until I have proven myself to my love!”  
  
Naruto was considering having Kakashi quietly dope the man so they could move him without making a fuss. On the third day, however, he walked in to see Sakura, standing prettily in front of the iron bars in a dress and hat, chattering away to the prisoner. She blushed when she saw Naruto’s face.  
  
“What?” she said. “Tsunade told me you were keeping him locked away all alone in here. It’s not a crime to make a little conversation, is it?”  
  
Lee, for his part, looked like he’d been hit over the head with something very large and very hard. His eyes were dazzled.  
  
Naruto had no choice but to release him after that. Rock Lee became a constant presence at Tsunade’s.  
  


*

  
The road out of Konoha was a wide one, nothing more than packed dirt, really. Buildings grew sparser as one moved east, and then spread into nothing as rolling cattle fields bled into desert sand. Normally Naruto took the uncovered road, loving the feel of Konoha standing solidly behind him  
  
Today, though, the sense of being watched wouldn’t go away. If he were smart, he’d take the main path; it left no opportunities for an ambush. It wasn't an ambush he was worried about, though. There was a confrontation brewing, and it wasn’t one he wanted an audience for.  
  
The sun was three-quarters set when he slipped in between the alley separating the bank from the local stables. He’d left his horse tied there for the night, wanting the freedom to walk. He stopped when he was halfway down the alley, then turned.  
  
“I know you’re there,” he said to the empty street.  
  
The gunslinger moved smoothly, for sure. There was barely a ripple in the shadows as he stepped forward, a wary look on his face.  
  
Naruto didn’t give him a chance to react. He slammed Sasuke against the brick siding of the bank, hearing his head crack against the unforgiving surface. The Uchiha slumped forward for a brief second, and Naruto took the opportunity to pin him, both wrists against the cold stone.  
  
“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you right now,” Naruto said, voice shaking. “Give me a reason not to put a fucking bullet between your eyes.”  
  
His temper was at the breaking point. He could feel it, bubbling up hotly in his chest, behind his eyes. His nerves were snapping with the need for violence. If Sasuke did anything, said anything…  
  
He didn’t, though. He just stood silently, eyes very dark, head tipped back against the brick. His face was unnaturally still in the gathering dusk, and Naruto could feel his quiet, controlled breathing. Minutes passed.  
  
“Well,” he said finally, a mere thread of sound. “Are you going to kill me?”  
  
Naruto punched him instead, felt the jarring vibration as his knuckles met flesh. Sasuke’s head snapped around. Naruto swung again, but the gunfighter somehow managed to evade it with some inhuman twist of his body, so that Naruto’s fist slammed directly into the brick siding. He heard the crunch of bone a second before he felt the blinding pain. Then he was stumbling back, holding his hand.  
  
“You moron,” Sasuke snapped, grabbing his wrist. “What are you trying to do?”  
  
“Beat you bloody,” Naruto said faintly, but the pain was making him too nauseous to put any heat into the words. His hand looked all wrong, scraped raw and misshapen. He’d left a crack in the brick he hit, and it was dropping russet crumbs of stone to the ground.  
  
Sasuke yanked his hand into a tiny sliver of light, examining it. Naruto didn’t fight.  
  
“Idiot,” he said after a second. “You broke your own hand.”  
  
“Shut up,” Naruto said, trying to pull it back. He suddenly wanted to howl like a four-year-old, just throw a tantrum right there in the alleyway. Sasuke tightened his fingers on Naruto's wrist, and Naruto hissed in pain.  
  
“Come on,” Sasuke said. “I’ll fix it before you make it worse.”  
  
Naruto stood stubbornly. “Kakashi – ”  
  
“Is probably passed out by now. Come on, Sheriff.”  
  


*

  
“Here,” Sasuke said, handing him a glass. “Drink. This is going to hurt.”  
  
Naruto eyed the whiskey suspiciously. Sasuke rolled his eyes.  
  
“Look,” he said, taking a swig out of the glass. He wiped his mouth, then handed it back. “Satisfied?”  
  
“Not until you’re behind bars,” Naruto muttered, but he drank.  
  
It was a good thing, too. He saw stars when Sasuke shoved his knuckles back into their rightful places. His vision tilted sideways, and when it righted itself, he felt a hand on the back of his neck, pressing his head between his knees.  
  
“That was the worst of it,” Sasuke said calmly.  
  
“Asshole,” Naruto managed in return, and Sasuke smiled. Not a smirk, but a small, tired smile. He’d left his hat on the table, and his hair was sticking out every which way again. Naruto suddenly realized he was young. Not much older than himself, if that.  
  
“Why are you doing this?” Naruto asked. Sasuke had begun wrapping Naruto’s swollen hand in gauze.  
  
He was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was stiff. “Consider it recompense.”  
  
It took a minute for that to work itself out in Naruto’s brain. When it finally did, he looked away.  
  
“Yeah, well…it’s not enough,” Naruto muttered. Sasuke didn’t answer. “Where did you learn doctor stuff, anyway?” he said, trying to keep the surly tone to his voice. It was hard, with the whiskey's warmth spreading through his chest.  
  
“My father was a surgeon,” Sasuke answered quietly. He started covering the gauze with medical tape.  
  
“But you decided being a gunslinger was a better deal,” Naruto said snidely.  
  
Sasuke’s face had gone remote again, just shut down completely. “You wouldn’t understand,” he said, and dropped Naruto’s hand. Naruto lifted it and looked at it, all neatly bandaged.  
  
“Thanks,” he said grudgingly.  
  
Sasuke sat. Without his duster and hat, he looked awfully human. His eyes, however, still had their edge.  
  
“Now that we’re even,” he said, “we need to talk.”  
  
Naruto wanted to argue that they were in no way even – one bandaged hand hardly made up for being drugged and humiliated, not to mention the fact that he still wasn’t convinced Sasuke wasn’t the murderer. His curiosity got the better of him, though.  
  
“What?” he said reluctantly.  
  
Sasuke’s gaze was steady. “I told you before. I’m interested in the murders. I want to know what you know.”  
  
Naruto narrowed his eyes. “Why?”  
  
Sasuke’s smile was a mockery, but Naruto didn’t feel like he was the one being mocked. “Because I want to solve them, of course.”  
  
“What? Why?”  
  
“None of your business,” Sasuke retorted. “Do we have a deal?”  
  
"Not much of a deal. I don't see what I get out of it."  
  
Naruto saw Sasuke's fingers tense. "What do you suggest, then?" His voice was a study in nonchalance, but Naruto heard something eager riding below it. Sasuke wanted information, and for some reason he wanted it badly.  
  
Naruto took his time propping both boots up on the table. He leaned his head back, scratched his stubble with his good hand, crossed his arms.  
  
“Apologize properly,” he said.  
  
Sasuke looked appalled, and Naruto let his mouth curl into a smile. "Go ahead."  
  
"I-I'm sorry," Sasuke said in a strangled voice.  
  
"That didn't sound very sincere," Naruto said.  
  
He saw a muscle start to tick in Sasuke’s jaw. “This is stupid,” he said. “You're trying to find the killer. I could be of use.”  
  
“Maybe I’ve already found the killer,” Naruto said sweetly. “Maybe he’s right here.”  
  
“Maybe I could break your hand again,” Sasuke replied in the same tone.  
  
They glared at each other for a few moments. Finally, Naruto sighed. “Fine,” he said. “But not tonight. I’m tired.”  
  
“Tomorrow could be too late,” Sasuke said sharply, and Naruto had no idea what he was talking about, but he really didn’t have the energy to care at the moment. He was beginning to realize that at least half of Sasuke Uchiha’s aura was pure melodrama. All Naruto had to do to ruffle the gunslinger was refuse to buy into it.  
  
“I’m tired,” Naruto repeated with a bit more force. “I haven't arrested you - that should be enough. You go back and check into the hotel so Iruka can keep track of you. If you’re still here in the morning, we’ll talk.”  
  
Sasuke’s mouth drew into an angry line. He looked liked he wanted to protest more, but Naruto ended the discussion by rising and blowing out the nearest oil lamp.  
  
He jumped when he realized Sasuke was right behind him. “Don’t do that,” he breathed. “Make some noise, will you?” His heart was beating very fast.  
  
"I'm not sure how you think you could arrest me when you can't even keep track of me," Sasuke said mildly. He picked up Naruto's hand and examined it again. He held it up to the light, slid his fingers over the seamless wrap. “Don’t sleep on top of it,” he said. “It needs time to heal.”  
  
Naruto’s mouth was dry for some reason. "I know that," he said. "I'm not stupid."  
  
Sasuke didn’t let go. His eyes were hidden by dark lashes, but Naruto could feel the heat of his body, very close. He moved his thumb down to the pulse on Naruto’s wrist, and Naruto remembered Sasuke’s mouth on him, remembered the way he’d writhed under those hands.  
  
Sasuke’s gaze flickered up. He shifted forward, and Naruto jerked away.  
  
“I’m not – ” he said, scattered. “I mean, I don’t…” His brain was scrambling for the right words, even though his body was telling him in very clear language that he was and he did.  
  
“You’re too skittish,” Sasuke said matter-of-factly. He touched the mouth-sized bruise on Naruto’s neck, and Naruto stiffened. Three days hadn't erased it, from Naruto's skin or his brain. “If you don’t cover that up, someone will notice.”  
  
“It would be your damn fault if they did,” Naruto snapped, relief and disappointment itching against each other. Naruto batted Sasuke’s hands away.  
  
“It wasn’t personal, you understand,” Sasuke continued in that same, hatefully flat voice. “I was looking for information.”  
  
“Well, it’s a damn strange way to go about it. You go around molesting people in every town you pass through?”  
  
Sasuke didn’t answer. “Try not to do anything else stupid,” he said instead, and then he turned to go. His boots didn’t make a sound on the creaky wood of the stairs.  
  
Naruto finished off the bottle of whiskey when he was gone, just drained it until there was nothing left to drain. Then he collapsed, face down on his quilt. His dreams were filled with gunpowder and blood, dead girls and dark eyes and a memory he couldn’t shake.  
  


*

  
Naruto woke to see a familiar gray head bobbing in his line of vision. “What the fuck are you doing here?” he said irritably.  
  
Kakashi’s affable face popped into view. “Mornin’ sheriff,” he said. “I heard your fist had a little run-in with a wall.”  
  
What the hell?  
  
“How did you know that?” he asked carefully, sitting up.  
  
Kakashi looked legitimately surprised. He held up a scrap of paper. “You didn’t leave this in my office?”  
  
Naruto snatched it from him  
  


_I lost a fight with a brick wall. Meet me at my house in the morning. It needs to be dressed._

_Naruto_

  
Naruto didn’t miss that Sasuke had left out his title.  
  
Kakashi was still looking at him expectantly, so Naruto shrugged and held out his hand for inspection. “Never mind.”  
  
Kakashi raised his one visible eyebrow. “I thought it sounded a bit…demanding,” was all he said.  
  
He began unraveling the tape. “Did you do this?” he asked with mild curiosity.  
  
“Eeeerrr…”  
  
“It’s a good job,” he continued. “I didn’t think you had the patience to bandage a cut, let alone set a broken bone.”  
  
“Hey!”  
  
His hand was twice its normal size and hurt like the devil, but Kakashi seemed to think he’d live. He offered him a small bottle of laudanum to help with the pain. Naruto shuddered as he handed it back.  
  
Once Kakashi was done with him, Naruto’s first stop was the hotel.  
  
“Uchiha?” Iruka said blankly, staring up at him. “No, he never checked back in. Why?”  
  
Naruto ripped Kakashi’s careful binding to shreds when he slammed his fist into the heavy oak desk.  
  


*

  
“Two times?” Sakura asked in disbelief. “You broke the same hand two times in twenty-four hours?”  
  
“Yup,” Naruto said proudly. “Don’t you feel sorry for me?”  
  
“Yes,” she said flatly. “Clearly you were dropped on your head as a child.”  
  
After round two at Kakashi’s office, Naruto had reluctantly agreed to a small amount of medication to alleviate the screaming pain in his hand. As a result, his mood had brightened considerably.  
  
Tsunade’s place was still officially closed for business, but the new piano player was getting acquainted with the ivories. Tsunade had introduced him as Sai, and he had a constant blankness to his gaze that gave Naruto chills. If he’d shown up only a week earlier, he’d be taking Rock Lee’s place behind bars.  
  
As it was, Lee had barely left Sakura's side since Naruto had set him free. He'd finally left Tsunade's to get some sleep after a night of serenading Sakura from beneath her window. Tsunade was inches away from starting a lynch mob, and Naruto was half-considering joining. He was torn between annoyance that Lee was monopolizing Sakura's attention and relief that Sakura at least had someone else looking out for her safety.  
  
She was fixing her hair in the gleaming reflection of the bar surface now, and Naruto winked at her. She pretended not to notice, but Naruto saw her mouth deepen into a little smile.  
  
Tsunade reached out and physically turned his face away from where Sakura was climbing the stairs. “Tell me you haven’t been totally useless,” she said.  
  
If Jiraiya had been Konoha’s founding father, then Tsunade was the matriarch. Naruto didn’t even think of keeping information from her.  
  
She frowned as Naruto rattled off the list of suspects. “Not Uchiha?” she said. “Why not?”  
  
Try as he might, Naruto couldn’t reconcile himself to the idea that Sasuke was guilty. He  _couldn’t_. He’d fixed Naruto’s hand. He’d said he wanted to help.  
  
 _Okay_ , he admitted to himself.  _So he didn’t exactly use those words_. But still. Guilty people didn’t offer their services, right?  
  
For some reason, seeing Sasuke Uchiha hung for murder up was suddenly the last thing Naruto wanted.  
  
He squirmed under Tsunade's stare. “The timing’s wrong.”  
  
“For the older one, maybe,” she said impatiently. “But the other…”  
  
Naruto was saved from having to think up another excuse by the door opening. Neji Hyuuga stepped into Tsunade's saloon, pale eyes sweeping the dark interior. He had a letter in his hand.  
  
Naruto slid warily down from his stool. He refused to acknowledge Hyuuga as a suspect, but that didn't mean he had to like the man. Or trust him, for that matter.  
  
"Here," Neji held the letter out with two fingers, like it was dirty. "Our new employee picked up Uncle’s mail this morning and managed to get one of yours in the pile. I caught it before he burned it with the rest of the scraps."  
  
"I'm surprised you didn’t help him," Naruto said sourly.  
  
"That would be childish," Neji returned coolly.  
  
“And I suppose you fired the hand, too,” Naruto said, tearing open the thick envelope.  
  
Neji shrugged. “Uncle makes those decisions.”  
  
Naruto could feel Hyuuga's and Tsunade's eyes on him as slid the letter out. The paper was stamped with a United States seal so fancy and large that it took up more room than the typed text itself. It took a few seconds for Naruto to process the words, and when he did, he crumpled the letter up into a ball and shoved it into his coat pocket.  
  
"Well," Tsunade demanded. "Are they going to help?"  
  
"No," Naruto said shortly.  
  
"No," Neji repeated in an icy voice. "Of course not. And you're a fool for even asking. Why would the government care about the welfare of a few whores?"  
  
That had, indeed, been what the letter expressed, in far fancier language. That didn't stop Naruto's hands from balling into tight fists. He felt the bones of his broken fingers aching. "Get out," he said in a dangerous voice.  
  
Neji's lips pressed together in a tight line, and then he turned on his heel and strode out.  
  
"He's upset over Hinata still." Tsunade said, watching him leave.  
  
"He didn't give a damn about Hinata," Naruto said in a low voice. "He's upset because Konoha's reputation is turning. And if Konoha's reputation turns, that means less business for the Hyuugas." Naruto shoved his hat back on his head. "I'm going," he said. "Let me know if you hear anything el - "  
  
A sharp crack from the second floor interrupted him, followed by a scream. Naruto was halfway up the stairs by the time the second gunshot sounded. There were pounding footsteps, the sound of glass shattering, and then nothing.  
  
Naruto burst into Sakura's bedroom, gun drawn.  
  
Sakura was crumpled on the floor, the skin of her throat red and raw. Her dainty gun was lying inches from her limp hand, and the barrel was smoking.  
  
The window had exploded, sprinkling glass all across the red rug. And in the middle of it all was Sasuke Uchiha, bleeding out onto the floor from a bullet to the chest.


	5. Chapter 4

"Stop it," Sakura said, pushing hovering hands away from her face. "I'm fine, so you can all just stop." Kakashi was holding an ice pack to the back of her head, and the red marks around her neck were starting to darken into bruises.  
  
Naruto had heard that tone enough times to know when to back down, but Rock Lee was new, after all. "Sakura, love," he breathed. "You're far too fragile to be talking so soon after - "  
  
Sakura clocked him in the mouth, and Lee fell flat on his butt. Naruto laughed.  
  
"You are an amazon," Lee said from the floor, lip bleeding. "I do not deserve you."  
  
Tsunade looked like she was ready to rip into all of them. "Perfect," she said. "There's blood all over my floor and a hole in my window, and you three are acting like you're at a country dance."  
  
It took Naruto a few seconds to realize Tsunade had just included him in the flirting. It wasn't a totally unfair assessment - normally he  _would_  be flirting, or at least attempting to out-do Rock Lee. Since Sakura had woken up, however, he hadn't thought of much besides Sasuke, unconscious in the room next door.  
  
Sasuke would live, Kakashi had said, but it was a near miss. The bullet hadn't hit bone or organ, but had torn through a few layers of muscle and tissue. It was lucky there had been others present, or he might have bled to death before he was found. It was odd, Naruto thought, how a simple statement like that could make him freeze up, constrict his chest so he couldn't quite breathe.  
  
"So he went out the window," Naruto said, frustrated. "But how did he get  _in_? We were watching to door the whole time."  
  
Sakura shook her head. "I don’t know. He must have...must have already been in the room. But someone came up behind me and put a hand over my mouth, and then he grabbed my throat and just started squeezing. I tried to scream, but it all happened so fast, and..." she swallowed. "B-but then the gunfighter - I don't know what he was doing there - he walked into the room and just sort of stopped. He must have startled the man strangling me, because suddenly I could breathe again, and then..." Her jaw was clenched, and Naruto could see the sheen of tears in her eyes.  
  
She shook her head. "I don't know. Then everything sort of sped up. I tried to get the gun Tsunade gave me, but I think I missed. And then he shoved me and I hit my head on the wall. That's all I remember."  
  
Lee put tentative fingers on her arm again, and this time she didn't push the cowhand away.  
  
"And you never saw his face?" Naruto asked. She shook her head again.  
  
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I can't remember anything else."  
  
"You're alive," Kakashi said gently. "That's the most important thing."  
  
"I know," Sakura said in a small voice, not sounding convinced at all.  
  
"What do you think?" Tsunade asked him in a hushed voice while Kakashi saw Sakura off to bed.  
  
"I think you have blood on your floor and a hole in your window," Naruto said wearily. "And we still have no suspects."  
  
"There were two shots," Tsunade reminded him. "It still could have been him, or maybe he's working with a partner."  
  
"The bullet Kakashi took out of him wasn’t from Sakura’s gun," Naruto said. “Why would his own partner shoot him?”  
  
“Maybe he panicked.”  
  
Naruto was quiet.  
  
“Well,” Tsunade said. “He’s not going anywhere. We’ll just have to wait until he wakes up.”  
  
“Until then,” Naruto said, “you better finish clearing Hinata’s room.”  
  
Tsunade’s brow furrowed. “Why?”  
  
“I’m moving in,” Naruto said. “I don’t know how he keeps getting in unnoticed, but next time I want to be here.”  
  


*

  
“This isn’t proper at all,” Ino scowled, watching Naruto hang his hat on the corner of the dresser. “Men don’t live here.”  
  
“Oh, please,” Sakura said, smoothing out the covers on Naruto’s bed. “We’re a saloon, not an abbey.”  
  
“Sakura’s right,” Tsunade said from the hall. “There’s proper and then there’s stupid. This makes the most sense for now.”  
  
Ino’s scowl only deepened. “Sakura’s just happy because her suitor gets to move in next door.”  
  
“Not next door,” Naruto interjected. He’d made sure of that.  
  
Sakura had moved to Shizune’s old bedroom to let Kakashi use hers as a surgery. Rock Lee had valiantly offered to move into Hinata’s old bedroom, located directly next to Shizune’s. Naruto had put him on the other side of Sasuke’s quarters instead.  
  
It served two purposes: First, Lee couldn’t get to Sakura’s new room without walking straight past Naruto’s. Second, Sasuke was officially landlocked. The only way he could escape without Lee or Naruto hearing was out the window. And with a recent bullet wound to the chest, Naruto didn’t think he’d be jumping out of many windows for a few months at least.  
  
Sasuke slept for two days straight. The girls at Tsunade’s took turns watching him, with Rock Lee acting as constant guard. If he kept it up, Naruto figured he was going to have to start paying Lee a deputy’s salary. Naruto went to and from his office, doing paperwork, visiting all the local establishments, trying his best to be reassuring. The minor disputes that he was used to addressing had dwindled to almost nothing. He figured people didn’t have the motivation for petty complaints when the whole town was so jumpy.  
  
Either that, or they didn’t even trust him with the simple things anymore.  
  
He checked on Sasuke whenever he could. Sasuke Uchiha had snubbed everyone in town, caused an uproar, was a possible murderer, and the girls  _still_ fought over who got to coax soup down his precious throat every night. He walked in once to see Ino peeking under the blanket.  
  
“What?” she said defensively. “It’s not like men this handsome wander through Konoha every day. Let me enjoy it a little.”  
  
“Out,” Naruto said.  
  
Sasuke’s surgery had drained his face of the little color it had. He’d already ridden out the fever of infection, but there was still a sheen of sweat on his body, and his hair was limp and damp against the flowery pillow.  
  
Naruto never thought he’d admit it, but he didn’t like seeing Sasuke Uchiha defenseless. It was unsettling. No,  _annoying_. The gunfighter was annoying even when he was unconscious.  
  
“Hey,” Naruto said, poking a finger into one bony shoulder. “Wake up.”  
  
Sasuke didn’t move.   
  
“You better not be faking,” Naruto said, trying to fill up the silence in the room. “Because I’m wasting a hell of a lot of time on you. The girls have other things to do, you know.”  
  
The bastard still didn’t open his eyes. His hands were very still against the covers. Too still. Naruto could remember those hands moving on him, stroking him, making him come. He wondered how many times Sasuke had done that with other men, how many had liked it.  
  
He hadn't liked it, Naruto reminded himself. He'd been forced. But no one was forcing him now, and he couldn't shake this strange obsession. He wondered what it would be like to touch back.  
  
He would never find out. It was a sin to even wonder, and Naruto couldn't imagine how he was going to get through the rest of his life without having that curiosity satisfied.  
  
“Kakashi says you’re going to be fine, so just…quit being lazy, okay? You can just wake up now.” The last part trailed off into a whisper, and Naruto realized his own hands weren’t quite steady.  
  
“Now that’s interesting,” Kakashi said from the doorway. “I’ve never seen anyone try threats on a sleeping man before.”  
  
Naruto stood up so quickly that he knocked the chair over.  
  
“Not a bad idea,” Kakashi mused. “Less than effective, maybe.”  
  
“He’s taking too damn long,” Naruto said, trying to force some surliness into his voice. “He might have seen the murderer. Every day he just lays there, someone else could get killed.”  
  
“Patience,” Kakashi said. “Push him too fast and he could die. Then where will we be?”  
  
“Fine,” Naruto said. “Let me know if he – ”  
  
Sasuke moaned. They both froze, looking at the bed.  
  
Naruto inched closer. “Sasuke?”  
  
Eyelids fluttered, opened. “Naruto?” he whispered.  
  
Naruto swallowed. “Yup.”  
  
Sasuke’s eyes fell shut again, and then he groaned. “Fucking hell,” he said hoarsely.  
  


*

  
“What do you need?” Sakura asked anxiously. “Can I get you water? Or food? Or maybe – ”  
  
“For god’s sake,” Tsunade snapped. “The man has a hole in his chest the size of a cactus stump and probably twice as painful. Give him some space.”  
  
“Yeah,” Naruto said. “It’s not like he  _did_ anything anyway. He walked through the door and got shot.”  
  
Sakura whipped her head around to glare at him. “I’d be dead if it weren’t for him,” she said. “So watch your mouth.”  
  
Sasuke, for his part, was studiously ignoring everyone.  
  
“Fine, fine,” Naruto said. “But,” he started ticking things off on his fingers. “He didn’t see the killer’s face, he doesn’t remember anything that would be useful on a poster, he – the great gunfighter – couldn’t even  _draw_ fast enough to get a shot off – ”  
  
Sasuke decided to join the conversation at that. “He had a gun to her throat,” he said coolly. “And he was masked. There was nothing I could do.”  
  
“See,” Naruto said triumphantly. “Useless.”  
  
Sasuke looked at him with the first hint of curiosity in his eyes. “So why am I here, Sheriff? Healing in a nice warm bed instead of rotting in a jail cell?”  
  
Naruto could feel his face begin to heat up. “We thought you might be a witness,” he muttered. “And we couldn’t have you dying.”  
  
“I didn’t see anything. Does that mean I’m free to go?”  
  
“Yes,” Sakura said, at the same time that Naruto said, “No.”  
  
“Naruto!” Sakura protested.  
  
“No,” he said firmly. “He’s got a price on his head already. And he still hasn’t answered my questions. Like how the hell he got in without anyone seeing him.”  
  
“You might want to fix the lock on the cellar door,” he said pointedly. “It wasn’t difficult to walk in. For me or anyone else.”  
  
Tsunade’s mouth tightened. “And what, exactly, were you doing breaking into my business in the first place?”  
  
Sasuke’s eyes turned chilly. “Personal.”  
  
“Watch it, bastard,” Naruto told him, even as Tsunade’s eyes snapped. “The jail cell is still free.”  
  
Sasuke’s lips drew into a tight line. He was silent for a few seconds, eyes mutinous, and Naruto let him stew.  
  
Finally he said, “Fine. But I don’t want the entire town as witnesses. This isn’t anyone’s business by mine.”  
  
“Fine,” Naruto said evenly. “I’ll get a private room.” Tsunade made a noise of protest, but he overrode her with a gesture. “And you’ll tell me the whole truth this time, or you really will end up rotting in a cell.”  
  


*

  
Sasuke’s eyes were furious. “Where should I start?” he said. He was fighting for a calm tone of voice, but Naruto could see how every word rankled. The gunfighter didn’t much like being under someone else’s power.  
  
Naruto, for his part, was enjoying himself immensely. “Hmmm,” he drawled, scratching his head. “The beginning might be helpful, I imagine.”  
  
“Never mind,” Sasuke said in a strained voice. “I’ll take the cell.”  
  
Naruto smirked. “Too late. Spill.”  
  
Sasuke dropped his eyes. “I was investigating.”  
  
“If you’d checked back into the hotel like I told you to, I would’ve showed it to you myself. Without the bullet.”  
  
Sasuke’s voice was cool. “I told you. If I leave it up to you I’ll be a corpse before this is solved.”  
  
Naruto felt all the muscles in his shoulders tense up at the insult, but he forced himself to stay calm. “You’ll be a corpse anyway if you keep trying to do it alone. Why are you in such a hurry to get this solved, huh? These girls don’t mean a thing to you.”  
  
Sasuke struggled with himself for a moment. Naruto could almost see all the possible answers ticking through his dark eyes. Luckily for him, the answer he gave sounded like truth. Or part-truth, at least, and that was a start.  
  
“Because Itachi’s trying to solve it, too,” he said. “And this time, I’m going to do it first.”  
  
Naruto narrowed his eyes. “Why would Itachi give a lick about Konoha?”  
  
“He doesn’t,” Sasuke said shortly. "But lately he’s been taking on…side projects. He goes after wanted men, chases them down for his own amusement. He kills them before the law gets anywhere near them.”  
  
"That's vigilantism," Naruto noted. "No wonder he has such a big price on his head."  
  
Sasuke looked away. Naruto could see him biting his lip, sharp white teeth pressing into the flesh. His voice was very low when he spoke again. "He likes to test himself, to see if he can catch the ones no one else can, to see if anyone can outsmart him. So far, no one has."  
  
Everything clicked into place. "And you think he's chasing this murderer. Our murderer."  
  
"I know he is," Sasuke said emphatically. "I tracked him to Suna when girls started dying there, and then to here. He's looking for the same man we are. But this time, I'm going to solve it first. And when Itachi shows himself again, I'll be waiting."  
  
Naruto sat back in his chair. “What makes you so sure it’s the same man? Itachi left a week before anyone died here in Konoha.”  
  
“I know, is all,” Sasuke said, unhelpful.  
  
"Jail cell," Naruto reminded him.  
  
Sasuke heaved a sigh. “Because the trio was here, too.”  
  
“Trio?”  
  
“The three gunfighters that Itachi’s been following. Every town Itachi passes through, it seems they were there before. Wherever there are people dying, these three come first.”  
  
Naruto’s brain shot back to the initial list of suspects Iruka had given him. “Three,” he repeated. “They were here, all right. But they left at the same time Itachi did. A week before the first murder.”  
  
Sasuke shook his head. “No. No, that’s what everyone  _thinks_.” There was a gleam in his eye, and Naruto felt the hairs start to rise on the back of his neck. “But I think Itachi fucked up. The three that he followed into town isn’t the same three that he followed out. I think they figured out they were being trailed, and they split up. At least one of them is still here. He  _has_ to be.”  
  
Sometimes Naruto wished his brain moved just a little faster. Sasuke was staring at him triumphantly, like he’d just invented the wheel all over again. Naruto was still stuck on the possibility that there were  _three_ killers instead of one.  
  
“Hold on,” Naruto said. “Wouldn’t Itachi, y’know,  _notice_ if he were suddenly following three different people? Or is he blind?”  
  
“No, no, I don’t know how they did it,” Sasuke said impatiently. “Maybe they kidnapped someone and dressed them up like the third member of their party. The point is that he left an opening. This is my chance to figure it out before he does. If Itachi left a man behind in Konoha, he’ll come back for him, I’m sure of it.”  
  
“Slow down,” Naruto said. “Are you telling me there’s another Konoha victim out there – someone who got kidnapped?”  
  
“Probably.”  
  
Naruto rose to his feet. “Are you  _insane_? Why didn’t you say something before?”  
  
Sasuke stared calmly up at him. “They’re most likely dead by now anyway. If no one’s filed a report, then it was probably just some drifter.”  
  
Naruto felt his hands clenching into fists. “I may be an idiot,” he seethed, “but at least Jiraiya taught me the value of human life. These are  _people_ , and you may not care about them, but they matter to  _me_.”  
  
Sasuke didn’t look ashamed. He didn’t look anything at all. “I know about human life,” he said. “I know because everyone who matters to me is dead.”  
  
Naruto jammed his hat on his head.  
  
“Where are you going?” Sasuke asked warily.  
  
“To find out who’s gone missing,” Naruto barked.  
  
“I’m not done talking.”  
  
“Well I am,” Naruto said rudely. “You even stick your head out of this room and Rock Lee will shoot you on sight.”  
  
“You’re wasting your time,” Sasuke said sharply.  
  
“Since the second I met you,” Naruto said, and slammed out of the room.  
  


*

  
Naruto found the body a few miles east of Konoha. It took him almost six hours, but he needed something to burn off his anger anyway. The sun was past its peak by the time he stumbled across the corpse, half-buried in the desert sand.  
  
It wasn't pretty. The flesh had mostly wasted away or been picked by insects and vultures. The skin was puckered and discolored, blackened by the desert sun. If Sasuke's timing was accurate, then the body had been moldering for nearly three weeks.  
  
"Shot to the gut," Kakashi said, eyeing the corpse critically. "Not sure yet if he bled to death or starved to death."  
  
Naruto's eyes felt gritty from riding through the desert all day. "Who was he?"  
  
Kakashi shrugged. His visible eye was bloodshot, and Naruto figured he'd caught the doctor before he'd gotten too deeply into his cups for the day.  
  
"A ranch hand, maybe. There's no way to recognize him at this point. Not unless someone claims him."  
  
Naruto leaned two hands against the surgeon’s table, hung his head forward.  
  
“I’m so sick of this,” he said in a low voice. “Every time I turn around, someone else is dead.”  
  
Kakashi didn’t offer him sympathy, and Naruto wasn’t expecting any.  
  
“I imagine the victims feel even worse than you do,” he said. “Let’s hope you turn around a little quicker next time.”  
  


*

  
Rock Lee’s head popped over the top of the building as Naruto approached Tsunade’s.  
  
“Good afternoon, Sheriff Naruto,” he said cheerfully.  
  
Naruto stared. “What are you doing on the roof?”  
  
“I sent him,” Tsunade said from the entrance. “I figure if he’s going to be hanging around, he might as well make himself useful. Ino’s ceiling has been leaking for months.”  
  
“Well…don’t do something stupid,” Naruto said. “Like fall. Kakashi’s been busy enough around here lately.”  
  
The piano player’s face leaned over the edge as well. “The roof is sufficiently flat,” Sai said calmly. “The likelihood of falling is quite small.”  
  
“Uh…right,” Naruto said.  
  
Lee saluted him. “I’m teaching him the art of roofing, Sheriff Naruto. It will make him a more valuable employee for Tsunade and for Konoha.”  
  
“I’m learning,” Sai affirmed in the same clinical tone. “It’s not difficult.”  
  
Sakura’s face appeared behind Tsunade. “Isn’t he handy?” she said brightly.  
  
“Which one?” Naruto asked sourly. “The cow freak or the machine?”  
  
“Lee, of course,” Sakura said dismissively. She shuddered. “The other one is creepy. Handsome. But creepy.”  
  
“I guess,” Naruto said doubtfully. He started to move through the doorway, but Sakura caught his arm.  
  
She cleared her throat. “Naruto,” she started hesitantly. “About Lee. I’ve been meaning to – ”  
  
“It’s getting late,” Tsunade cut her off, and Naruto saw her shoot a warning look in Sakura’s direction. “Go see to dinner before it burns.”  
  
Naruto hung his head. “Ino didn’t cook tonight?”  
  
Sakura narrowed her eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”  
  
Oops. “Nothing, nothing,” he said nervously, eyeing her clenched fist. He skirted around her in the doorway.  
  
He saw Tsunade shake her head briefly at Sakura before his back was all the way turned.  
  


*

  
Sasuke was sleeping when he slipped back into the room. He even frowned in his sleep, Naruto noted. Displeased with the world. His chest was covered in an undershirt, but Naruto could see the layer of bandages underneath, padding the place that the bullet had torn into him.  
  
Naruto didn't like to think about that, to think of Sasuke bleeding and helpless under Kakashi's knife. He wasn't sure why it bothered him so much. The desert was a violent place. Konoha enjoyed relative peace, but there were still gunfighters, still wild animals and Indian attacks and droughts that never seemed to end. People got hurt; people died.  
  
If Sasuke had died from that bullet, Naruto knew he would have mourned, and that was the most confusing thing of all.  
  
"Not too communicative, is he?" Tsunade remarked from behind.  
  
"No," Naruto said.  
  
"And neither are you, lately," she continued.  
  
Naruto turned to look at her.  
  
“You haven’t made a peep since you two were alone in that room yesterday,” she said. “What did he tell you?”  
  
Naruto started to speak, then re-thought. For whatever reason, Sasuke kept his quest for vengeance held tight to his chest. Naruto couldn’t bring himself to intrude on that.  
  
“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing that’s of use right now.”  
  
“So he did tell you something,” Tsunade murmured. Her face was placid, but her eyes were sharp. “It’s a mighty suspicious thing – him sneaking in here all on his own.”  
  
“I know,” Naruto said quietly.  
  
“Sakura seems convinced he’s innocent.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“And what about you?” Tsunade asked.  
  
“Yes,” Naruto heard himself say. “He’s innocent.”  
  
Tsunade looked away. “I’m not sure what he did to get his hooks into the two of you, but I guess I have to accept it for the moment, don’t I?”  
  
“Yes,” Naruto said.  
  
She made a discontented noise, then turned to go.  
  
“Granny,” Naruto said desperately, and she stopped. “I vouch for him, all right? I just…I don’t know who’s doing the killing, but I know it’s not him. Just…trust me.”  
  
By the time the door clicked shut, Sasuke’s eyes were open. They stared at each other for a moment.  
  
“How long were you awake?” Naruto asked accusingly.  
  
“Long enough,” Sasuke said. He eased himself into a half-sitting position, wincing all the way. Naruto resisted the urge to offer him a hand.  
  
“There was a body,” Naruto said, when Sasuke was finally settled. “A few miles east. He’d been there a while.”  
  
“That’s the direction Itachi went,” Sasuke said.  
  
Naruto stared at the floor. Half of him was still shaking with anger that there was someone else he could have protected and didn’t, another life gone. All he could see was Sasuke’s flat expression, his calm voice. He didn’t know if he was angrier at Sasuke for being like that, or at Itachi for making him like that.  
  
“Check the height and build,” Sasuke said. “It will match the murderer’s, I’m sure of it. It’s not a lot, but it’s a start.”  
  
“Oh yeah?” Naruto said moodily.  
  
Sasuke didn’t rise to the bait. “He’s dangerous,” Sasuke said. “He’s nearly killed Itachi a few times, and that’s not something to take lightly. You’ll have to watch your step.”  
  
“Aren’t I lucky to have you on my side?” Naruto said sarcastically, and Sasuke’s eyes narrowed.  
  
“What crawled up your britches?” he said. “I thought you’d be happy to have a lead. It helps your precious town, doesn’t it?”  
  
Naruto wasn’t sure what happened. One second he was across the room staring at Sasuke, the next he was hunched over the bed, fingers around Sasuke’s throat.  
  
“Someone died,” he gritted out. “Painfully in the desert. Without a family or a burial or any proper mourning. Only a monster would be happy.”  
  
Sasuke’s face hadn’t changed, but he couldn’t quite hide the spark of shock in his eyes. He was staring up into Naruto’s furious face, and his hand was on Naruto’s wrist. Not clutching or pleading, just resting.  
  
Naruto wanted to beat his face in until he bled, just kick and punch and take out all his anger on that expressionless mask. Because Sasuke hadn’t killed that man, but he didn’t  _care_ , didn’t see it as a tragedy or a life lost or anything but a stepping stone to his brother. And Naruto cared too much.  
  
“People die all the time,” Sasuke said, and his voice was only slightly raspy from the press of Naruto’s fingers. “At least something will come out of this death. Isn’t that better?”  
  
Naruto’s fingers tightened slightly, and the rage that was rushing through him was just strong enough that he thought he might do it, just squeeze and squeeze and squeeze until Sasuke couldn’t sneer at him anymore. Because he shouldn’t care what Sasuke said or thought or did. It shouldn’t matter what a random gunslinger thought about life or Konoha or Naruto, but Naruto couldn’t deny the fact that it did. It mattered, and it made him sick that he could care what someone so heartless felt, that he could  _want_ someone like Sasuke, just want and want and want his eyes and his mouth and his approval and his stupid, smug self.  
  
Sasuke was stone-still under his palms, and Naruto realized he wasn’t going to fight or struggle or do anything but watch out of dark eyes.  
  
Worse, Naruto knew that Sasuke knew that it would be enough. He wanted Sasuke, and that meant he wanted Sasuke to live, no matter what kind of person the gunfighter was.  
  
Naruto was shaking. He breathed slowly, fought back his anger. His vision cleared. His hands relaxed, sliding from Sasuke’s neck to his shoulders as he sank down on the edge of the bed. Everything was roaring painfully in his ears, and Naruto realized that was the closest he’d ever come to taking a life. He’d always had a temper, but nothing had ever quite worked him up like Sasuke Uchiha.  
  
He let himself slump, felt his forehead touch come to touch the headboard. He was pressing up against Sasuke’s chest, and it must have been painful, but Sasuke didn’t say a word. He shuddered as the adrenaline cooled in him.  
  
Everything was quiet in the room, and for a second he thought he might have killed Sasuke after all. But no. He could feel Sasuke breathing evenly against him. And it must have been his imagination, but he thought he felt Sasuke’s hands at his sides, ever so lightly.  
  
“What kind of sheriff can’t even strangle one gunfighter?” Sasuke said finally, very close to his ear, and even though it sounded like an insult, Naruto could almost see the small smile.  
  
Naruto didn’t feel like smiling. He felt like crying, and he couldn’t figure out why. He slid his head down, until his face was buried in the crook of Sasuke’s neck. He breathed in the scent of Sasuke’s skin and let himself wonder, for the first time, if he’d somehow fallen in love without noticing.  
  
He let his tongue creep out and touch Sasuke’s skin, and he wondered if Sasuke knew he was apologizing. He heard Sasuke take a deep, shuddering breath. Without raising his head, Naruto brought his left hand up to cup Sasuke’s jaw, fingers running over the skin.  
  
Any second now, Naruto thought. Any second he was going to turn his face and kiss Sasuke on the mouth, just breathe him and taste him until he drowned. And it was sick and twisted and terrible, and he'd never wanted anything so badly. It was dangerous - more dangerous than murderers or gunfighters or incompetent sheriffs. But he wanted it badly enough to risk everything.  
  
“Naruto,” Sasuke said, in a stiff whisper, and it was like a dowse of cold water. “Get up. Someone’s coming.”  
  
By the time Sai opened the door, Naruto was leaning with one hand against the wall, a good two feet from the bed. He wondered if he was turned to the wall enough to hide his budding erection.  
  
“Dinner’s ready,” Sai said pleasantly. “The ugly pink-haired one cooked it, but Tsunade says we need to eat anyway, to keep our strength up.”  
  
“Don’t you knock?” Sasuke said, glowering at Sai.  
  
“Since you’re a prisoner, I didn’t think it was required,” Sai answered cheerfully.  
  
“I’m not a prisoner,” Sasuke snapped.  
  
“Really?” Sai said, genuinely surprised. “Then why don’t you leave?”  
  
“Why don’t you – ”  
  
“Cut it out,” Naruto said. “Sai, tell Tsunade I’ll be right down.”  
  
“All right,” Sai said cheerfully. “The hag said she’ll bring a tray up for the prisoner.”  
  
“Fine,” Naruto said.  
  
Sai paused thoughtfully in the doorway. “I didn’t realize the murderer tried to strangle the prisoner as well. Perhaps he should have Kakashi look at it?”  
  
Sasuke’s hands twitched. There were red marks on his neck from Naruto’s hands. Naruto struggled to keep his face blank.  
  
“Get going,” Naruto told Sai. “Tsunade doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”  
  
“Make sure you check his height against the victim’s,” Sasuke said when Sai was gone. “I don’t trust him.”  
  
“I think the feeling is mutual,” Naruto said darkly.  
  
Sasuke’s face was broody. “You’d do well to trust a little less, too.”  
  
Naruto pushed away from the wall. His body was still buzzing. “Sai? Or you?”  
  
“Both,” Sasuke said shortly.  
  
Naruto headed for the door. “And Naruto,” Sasuke said. “I don’t need you defending me, to Tsunade or anyone else.”  
  
Naruto heard the door creak as he slammed it behind him.


	6. Chapter 5

Naruto opened his eyes in the shadowy silence of his bedroom. Something wasn’t right.  
  
The moonlight filtered through the thin curtains over the window, casting gray shadows on the far wall. Naruto could just make out the swirls on the framed oil painting, the lamp's outline against the dark wood of the dresser, and the unmoving silhouette watching him from the corner.  
  
He started to say Sasuke's name, and then he realized that that wasn't right. The figure was too slight, the hair wasn't long enough. The deadly silence was all wrong. Naruto could see the whites of the stranger's eyes through the holes in his mask, the downward dip of his head as he stared, unblinking.  
  
The air in the room seemed to bend. Seconds stretched and slowed, and then Naruto heard the click of a safety.  
  
He was rolling off the bed in an instant, scrambling for his own gun. Sparks of blue and orange framed the explosion of gunpowder, and then the mattress split into showers of feathers as the bullet plowed through it. Another shot, and the bedside table buckled. The intruder moved, and then the free-standing antique shelves were tipping. Naruto pulled himself away just before the heavy structure came down on him, trinkets and all.  
  
Through the drifting cloud of smoke and feathers, Naruto saw the figure dart out the door.  
  
"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Naruto said under his breath, lunging toward the hall. "Lee," he hollered.  
  
He heard a door slam, and then Lee’s face appeared in the doorway, his eyes twice as large as normal. “Go,” Naruto said, pushing fallen books and objects off of him. “It’s him.”  
  
Lee’s eyes got even wider, and then he was gone, feet pounding down the hall as he gave chase.  
  
It took him a minute to crawl out of the shambles. When he finally made it to the hallway, Ino and Sakura were clinging to each other in their nightgowns. Sasuke was holding himself up in the door to his own bedroom, his chest still taped in bandages. His eyes met Naruto's for a split second, grim and set. He had his gun belt in his hand.  
  
"Don't even  _think_ about it," Naruto snarled at him as he hurried past. Tsunade's door was closed.  
  
"Tsunade," Naruto yelled through the door. Nothing. He tried the knob, but it wouldn’t budge. He could hear Sakura beginning to whimper behind him.  
  
He kicked the door down.  
  
Tsunade was sprawled on the bed, eyes closed. Her bare feet were hanging off the edge, and there was blood beginning to soak into the quilt around her graying head.  
  
Naruto could feel his throat start to close up.  _No_. She couldn't...he couldn't have... Tsunade was indestructible. Tsunade was  _Konoha_. It wasn't  _possible_ , she  _couldn't_...  
  
Sasuke stepped around his frozen figure and picked up a limp wrist, fingers on the pulse. "She's alive," he said calmly. "Go."  
  
Naruto could feel his whole body aching, tight with rage and helplessness. His nails were cutting into his palms. He was half-convinced he was still asleep, in the middle of a nightmare.  
  
“Don’t just stand there uselessly,” Sasuke bit out. “ _Go_.”  
  
Sai was already on horseback outside Tsunade's door, waiting. He had the reins to Naruto's mount in hand.  
  
"Which way?" Naruto said, vaulting himself up into the saddle. The wind was blowing, flinging piles of dust and sand at the sleeping buildings. He was still his undershirt, and the cold was raising goosebumps on his skin.  
  
Sai held up a hand for silence. Naruto watched as he cocked his head, calm and methodical. "Their voices are out of range," he said finally.  
  
Naruto frowned. "Lee was on foot. They couldn't have gone fa - "  
  
The sound of gunfire interrupted him. Naruto took off with Sai close behind.  
  
They were too late. Rock Lee was slumped against the side of a building when they got there, clutching at his thigh. "My leg," he said faintly. "He...shot me in the leg. I think...it's broken."  
  
Sai was scanning the landscape. "Which direction did he go?"  
  
Lee swallowed. Shook his head. "Too fast." he managed. "You won't...catch him."  
  
Sai didn’t even blink. "Which way?" he said again.  
  
Lee was breathing in jerky pants. Naruto couldn't see the details in the dark, but Lee's leg looked wrong. Uneven and bloodied. His pant leg was ripped through to the skin. Aside from his labored breathing there was no sound anywhere.  
  
"Sai," Nauto said. "He's gone." The words felt like they were ripped from his throat.  
  
Sai pressed his lips together in the closest thing to real emotion that Naruto had ever seen grace his face. He shoved his gun back into its holster in a jerky motion.  
  
By the time they made it back to Tsunade's, Lee slung between them like a rack of meat, Tsunade was sitting up in bed, letting Sasuke wind a bandage around her head. Sakura went into hysterics when she saw Lee’s leg. Sasuke looked up, and Naruto shook his head.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Tsunade said in a low voice. “I was stupid. I couldn’t sleep, so I went down to the cellar to check the back supplies. I didn’t think…when I walked back into my room. I didn’t look.”  
  
“He hit her from behind,” Sasuke said, eyes focused as he steadily measured out cloth. “She probably has a concussion, but she’ll recover.”  
  
“I don’t understand,” Naruto said, harried. “He’s never left anyone alive before. Why this time?”  
  
“He wasn’t interested in killing tonight,” Sai said, and Sasuke’s head snapped up. “He wasn’t interested in anyone except you, Sheriff. It seems you’re his prey now.”  
  
Naruto thought back to two shadowed eyes, watching him from the corner of his room.   
  
“You’re talking like an expert,” Sasuke said, tense. “Do you know something you’re not telling?”  
  
“Do you?” Sai returned calmly.  
  
Sasuke straightened, tied off the ending of Tsunade’s bandage with a savage jerk.  
  
“Watch it, gunfighter,” Tsunade said mildly.  
  
Naruto wondered, just for a moment, what would happen if he let Sasuke and Sai rip each other to shreds. He imagined the carnage for a moment, and the blissful silence that would follow. His life would get a lot more peaceful, for sure.  
  
“Mr. Uchiha.” Sakura broke the tension by sticking her pink head into the room. “My…Lee. If you could look at his leg, please…”  
  
“I’m not a doctor,” Sasuke said flatly. “You’ll have to wait for your town drunk to wake up.”  
  
“Please,” Sakura said, and her eyes were wet. Naruto had never been proof against that particular expression, and it didn’t seem Sasuke was either. His stony face was wavering.  
  
“I won’t be able to do anything,” Sasuke warned. “Even if I had the right equipment…”  
  
“I know,” Sakura said, brushing tears away from her cheeks. “But if you could just look...”  
  
Sasuke opened his mouth, closed it. “Fine,” he said gracelessly. “I’ll look.”  
  
“Thank you,” Sakura said, attempting a tremulous smile.  
  
“I didn’t know gunfighters healed people,” Sai said cheerfully.  
  
“They shoot annoying piano players, too,” Sasuke informed him coldly, and Tsunade groaned.  
  


*

  
Sai stumbled back into the brick wall when Naruto punched him across the face. The night had only deepened, and Naruto could feel his fingers shaking, from cold and something else.  
  
“You’re unpredictable,” Sai said, touching his split lip with a wince. “I keep forgetting that you don’t follow normal behavioral patterns.”  
  
“Shut. Up,” Naruto grated. “I told you if you hurt anyone… _anyone_ …”  
  
“It wasn’t under my control,” Sai said. “Any blame for tonight belongs to you, Sheriff. You’re the one he came looking for, after all.”  
  
“How do you know that?” Naruto yelled. “What aren’t you telling me?”  
  
Sai’s eyes were hard and dark. “Nothing you shouldn’t have already inferred yourself. Have you ever seen a desert snake play with a mouse? That’s what he’s doing with you now.”  
  
“Jesus.” Naruto took a step back, leaned against the wall.  
  
“You’re doing everything you can to stop him. You’ve gone to great lengths to protect your loved ones. Someone like him would find that…intriguing. Maybe even amusing.”  
  
“Hilarious,” Naruto snapped.  
  
“Naruto.” He looked up to see Sasuke’s pale face leaning out the window. “I looked at the cowhand’s leg. It’s not good.” Sasuke’s voice was even, but his black eyes were suspicious.  
  
“Fine,” Naruto said. “I’ll be right there.”  
  
“Hmmph.” Sasuke’s face disappeared back inside.  
  
Naruto hung his head. “You’re the least helpful government agent I’ve ever met.”  
  
“Cheer up,” Sai said in a voice devoid of any cheer whatsoever. “At least you’ve caught the murderer’s interest. He’s not going anywhere.”  
  
“What does that mean?”  
  
Sai turned his back and started up the steps. “It means he won’t be leaving Konoha now until you’re dead.”  
  


_8 hours earlier_

  
Ino made a face as she took a bite of the stew. “God, Sakura,” she said. “Where did you learn to cook? A barnyard?”  
  
Sakura smiled sweetly. “I thought you'd be used to slop by now, Ino-pig.”  
  
Ino took another suspicious bite. Lee was chewing with a vigor that belied the reluctance on his face. Naruto forced himself to swallow the burnt-tasting food and said nothing.  
  
They made an odd dinner table. Sai had seated himself next to Naruto immediately. Sakura and Lee were across the table, with Tsunade at one end and Ino at the other. Sai ate mechanically, without any sign of enjoyment or disgust.  
  
“Sai.” Ino shifted a little closer. “Tell us more about where you come from.” She seemed determined to out-flirt Lee and Sakura.  
  
Sai’s face didn’t change. “It has no relevance to the present company, I assure you.”  
  
The flat words daunted Ino, but only for a moment. She tipped her head to the side, put slim fingers on his hand. “You’re just being modest, I’m sure.”  
  
“No,” Sai said. “I’m not.”  
  
“But – ”  
  
“Oh, let him eat in peace,” Tsunade said, waving a hand. She mumbled something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like, “At least someone is.”  
  
“Yeah,” Naruto said. “No one wants to hear him talk anyway.”  
  
“Naruto,” Sakura said in disapproval.  
  
“That was not a very nice thing to say,” Lee agreed from beside her, and Sakura beamed.  
  
Sai stared at Naruto for a long moment. His eyes were oddly calculating. Finally, his face settled into a smile. It gave Naruto shivers.  
  
“I do have a story,” he said. Ino clapped her hands in excitement.  
  
“It’s a legend we have,” he continued. “They tell it often where I come from. Have you heard the story of the sand child, Sheriff?”  
  
Naruto paused with fork halfway to his face. “Sounds like a lousy story,” he said.  
  
“No,” Sai said. “I think you’ll enjoy this story very much.”  
  
“There was a child,” he started, “named Gaara. He was born just twenty years ago in a town much like Konoha. He had normal parents, a normal family.”  
  
“You need some pointers on what makes a good narrative,” Naruto told him. Sai kept going.  
  
“The child – Gaara – turned out to be a prodigy. He was smarter than you or I or anyone in the town he was born to. He began to read when he was two, could take a gun apart and put it back together by age four, and started assisting the town surgeon by age six.”  
  
“Amazing,” Ino said, fluttering her lashes.  
  
Sai looked at her. “Unfortunately the townspeople didn’t agree. The child’s strangeness frightened them. They threatened to burn all three children as witches if something wasn’t done. So his mother and father, in an effort to protect their two elder children, abandoned their youngest son in the desert to die.”  
  
“How awful,” Naruto heard Sakura murmur. Tsunade’s eyes were narrowed. Sai seemed entirely removed from the horrific nature of the tale he was relating. His pleasant tone hadn’t changed.  
  
“The child didn’t die, though. He was too brilliant for that. Some people say the desert adopted him, took him in and taught him how to live among the sand. The boy survived on his own for years, all by himself in the desert. After a while, they say he went mad from the loneliness.”  
  
Naruto’s throat was very dry. “And?” he said.  
  
Sai’s eyes creased. “He went back ten years later and slaughtered the town that had shunned him. He left only his brother and sister alive, and now the three of them travel from place to place, killing for amusement.”  
  
Naruto opened his mouth to say that that was just a bedtime story, meant to scare children into obeying their parents. Then he remembered that Sasuke had lived that story, or something much like it. Was living it still, except for the insane part. And Naruto had his doubts about that sometimes.  
  
And then the rest of the story hit him. Three siblings. A trio.  
  
“Well,” Ino said in a dazed voice. “That was…nice.” The faces around the table were similarly shell-shocked.  
  
“Sai,” Naruto growled. “Kitchen. Now.”  
  
Sai looked at him blankly. “You didn’t eat all your stew.”  
  
Naruto grabbed him by the collar and hauled him from his chair.  
  
“Where are you going?” Tsunade said sharply.  
  
“Dishes,” Naruto snapped, grabbing the nearest dirty plate he saw.  
  
“Ah,” Rock Lee said, getting to his feet. “Excellent idea. To repay the ladies for – ”  
  
“Not you,” Naruto cut him off. “Sai, let’s go.”  
  
“Konoha is a strange place,” Sai said as Naruto shoved him through the swinging doors. He sounded confused. “Where I come from, if a man washes dishes we question whether or not he’s really a man.”  
  
Naruto suppressed the urge to strangle. He opened the water pump with a vicious jerk, and water came splashing out into the basin, hitting the tin with a rusty ping. It wasn’t much, but it served to mask their words a bit.  
  
“What the hell was that about?” Naruto asked in an angry whisper.  
  
Sai blinked at him. “I was asked to provide entertainment. I complied.”  
  
“That wasn’t just a story and you know it.”  
  
Sai tipped his head. “You’re usually far more direct than this.”  
  
Naruto could feel his teeth grinding together. He wanted direct? Fine. “You have five seconds to tell me who you are and what you know, or you’ll be spending the rest of your time in Konoha in a jail cell.”  
  
Sai’s eyes locked on his, and in that moment Naruto knew he wasn’t a random piano player passing through. “My superiors wouldn’t like that,” he noted evenly.  
  
“Your…” Naruto stopped. “Who the hell are you?”  
  
Sai’s voice was cool and brisk. “We have the same goal,” he said. “That’s all you need to know.”  
  
“Do you work for the government?”  
  
“I’m not authorized to say any more.”  
  
“If they’re going to send someone in to help, they don’t have to get all sneaky about it,” Naruto said, frustrated. “We could have  _used_ some help. I mean, I wrote a letter….” He trailed off at Sai’s expression. “You’re not here to help.”  
  
“That’s irrelevant,” Sai said. “Like I said, our objective is the same. We both want to find the one attacking Konoha citizens.”  
  
Naruto wondered if a fist to the face would finally make that expression change. “And you think it’s this…this Gaara from your legend.”  
  
“It’s what I and my superiors believe, yes.”  
  
Naruto shook his head. “Why are you telling me this? I don’t know anything. I can’t help you. I haven’t even seen his face.”  
  
“No one has,” Sai said. “Except the townspeople he killed.”  
  
The basin was almost full. Sai reached across Naruto’s body, shut down the pump. He took one of the dirty dishes from Naruto’s hand and picked up the rag.  
  
“There’s more to the story,” Sai said. “I wasn’t quite done.” His long fingers moved in mechanical circles over the surface of the plate.  
  
“They say the sand child can’t sleep like a normal man. His years in the desert warped him. He’s a part of the desert, and yet it haunts him. He can only close his eyes where he knows the sand can’t see him.”  
  
Naruto was quiet for a moment. "The whole place is a desert," he said finally. "There's sand everywhere."  
  
“True.”  
  
“So where is he hiding?”  
  
There was a creak behind them, and they both looked.  
  
“Naruto.” Sakura was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, holding the door open for Neji Hyuuga. “Mr. Hyuuga is here. He says he needs to talk to you.”  
  
Naruto wasn’t sure how much they’d overheard. Neji’s face was paper-white.  
  
“It’s late,” Naruto said. “What do you want?”  
  
“I...n-nothing,” Neji said. “It’s not important. I’ll come back another time.”  
  
“You’re here,” Naruto said irritably. “So speak up. If it’s sensitive we’ll find another place.”  
  
“N-no,” Neji said. “Never mind.” He nearly bowled Sakura over in his haste to escape.  
  
She shrugged when he was gone. “Don’t ask me,” she said. “He just showed up at the door. Tsunade said to come find you.”  
  
“Do you think he heard?” Naruto asked after Sakura had returned to the dining room.  
  
“Only the last bit,” Sai said. “Not enough to understand what we were talking about.” Sai raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you hear them approaching? For a lawman, your senses are sadly underdeveloped.”  
  
“Yeah, well at least I’m not – ”  
  
“It turns out women’s work doesn’t suit me,” Sai interrupted Naruto mid-insult. He set the clean dish next to the basin, then turned to go. “I’ll let you finish.”  
  
“Sai,” Naruto said sharply, and Sai stopped. “How did you know I’d connect your story to the murderer?”  
  
Sai’s mouth turned up again. “I’ve observed your friendship with the gunfighter.” Naruto almost objected to the word _friendship_ but Sai was still talking. “I assumed he’d shared his own information once he became incapacitated. Am I wrong?”  
  
Naruto said nothing.  
  
Sai chuckled. “I thought not. The bond you’ve formed with him is strange, given your respective occupations. A sheriff and a gunfighter are natural enemies.”  
  
“And what makes you think Sasuke knew a damn thing?”  
  
“He has a sizable price on his head,” Sai said. “It would be a mistake not to keep track of him. And his…motivations.”  
  
Naruto tightened his fists, but he couldn’t help his next words from spilling from his mouth. “If you hurt…anyone,” Naruto said. “If you put anyone else in danger, I swear…”  
  
“Don’t worry,” Sai said mysteriously. “Your gunfighter is safe.” Then he was gone, and Naruto was left alone with the rippling water.


	7. Chapter 6

“Sit down,” Kakashi said, and Sakura went white. Naruto didn’t like the look on his face; it was almost gentle, when Kakashi never was.

"Tell me," she said. Her fingers were red from all the wringing.

"Sit," he repeated, and she sat.

"The bone in his thigh was fractured in three different places. If the bullet had struck at even a slightly different angle, I'd be amputating right now."

Sakura swallowed, and Kakashi hesitated. "Go on," she said.

"As it is, the breaks were uneven. He'll heal, but the likelihood that he'll be able to walk on his own power is slim to none."

"But...but he wants to own a ranch," she whispered. "How can he...?"

"With some practice, he'll be able to use a walking stick," Kakashi continued. "And assuming the leg doesn't become infected, he'll live a normal life. But his days working as a cowhand are over."

Naruto saw Sakura's hands tighten into small fists. "It's not fair," she said, choked. "He was just trying to help, and..."

Ino started to wail, and Sakura rounded on her.

"Why are  _you_ crying?" Sakura asked angrily. "You're the only one who  _hasn't_  been attacked."

"That means I'm next," Ino sniffled.

"Does...does he know yet?" Sakura asked.

"Not yet," Kakashi said. "He's still sleeping."

Naruto saw her lean back against the wall, slumping for a second. Then her chin snapped up. "All right," she said. "It's…it’s all right. We'll figure something out."

_We?_  Naruto thought, but Tsunade gave Sakura a nudge toward the stairs.

"Go check on him now," she said. There was pity in her voice.

Sakura went like a ghost, silent and hunched.

"All right," Kakashi said, and he sounded far, far too old. "Next."

Tsunade seated herself on one of the barroom stools, straight-backed and regal. Kakashi began unwinding the bandage, and Naruto saw his forehead crease.

"Who wrapped this?" he asked.

"I did." Sasuke spoke up for the first time since Kakashi had arrived. He'd been watching the proceedings from a far table, face inscrutable under the shadow of his hat. He'd refused to take to his bed again since the last attack. Naruto could see how he winced with every movement, but he didn't have the energy to waste on the epic stubbornness of Sasuke Uchiha. He'd let Sakura and Ino do the clucking.

Kakashi lifted his head to stare at Sasuke, and there was something assessing in his face.

Sasuke returned the stare, cool and challenging, and eventually Kakashi turned his attention back to his task.

"Is there a problem?" Naruto asked.

"None," Kakashi said. “It reminded me of something, is all." Naruto saw Kakashi's dark eyes flicker to his recently broken hand. He shifted the limb behind his back without thinking.

Sasuke looked unfazed.

Tsunade had nothing more than a lump and a headache, which barely alleviated the simmering panic in Naruto's gut. Lee and Tsunade made six. Six people under his care that had been hurt or killed.

It couldn't happen again.

The whole town was pulled tight as a drum, quivering in the aftereffects while they waited for the next hit. Traveling in the desert was dangerous - so far none of the townspeople had packed up their families and moved on yet, but Naruto could feel it coming.

No one else, Naruto promised himself. If Gaara of the Desert wanted to make him a target, then fine. The next time he'd be ready.

*

  
He took to staying up at night. He'd never in his life had trouble sleeping, but too much had happened. Every time he closed his eyes he saw the blood in Tsunade's hair, the bruises on Sakura's skin, Lee's leg mangled beyond repair.

Lee had actually  _apologized_  when Naruto went to see him.

"I am sorry Sheriff Naruto," he'd said miserably. "I should have been faster."

"Come on," Naruto said, stumbling over his words. "No.  _I'm_  the sheriff here. I'm the one who should have..."

"No!" Lee cut him off with a wild shake of his head. "Konoha needs you! It is better that it was me."

If Naruto hadn't already felt like shit, his conversation with Lee would have done the trick.

Sakura hovered around Lee's bedside constantly, her overly-bright smile a stark contrast to her desperate eyes. Naruto didn't even have the heart to confront her about the fact that, prior to Lee's injury, Lee had been spending his nights in her room.

"How do you know?" Sai asked him.

"The night the murderer broke in. When Lee went chasing after him, he came running from the wrong direction. His bedroom's on the other side of me."

"Well," Sai said. "It seems you're not completely stupid after all."

Sasuke was elusive in the days that followed. Naruto wasn’t sure what he did with his time, only that he didn’t seemed inclined to leave Tsunade’s. Whether it was because of Naruto’s threat to jail him or caution for his own injury, Naruto didn’t much care. Sasuke disappeared each morning, slid silently into his chair at supper time, then returned to his room for the evening.

After a few failed attempts, Ino gave up on flirting altogether. “Cold fish,” she sniffed behind Sasuke’s retreating back. Naruto thought of Sasuke’s mouth on his skin, hot and hard, and said nothing.

A week after the attack that ruined Lee’s leg, Naruto found himself downstairs in the main dining room well past midnight, steadily putting away one of Tsunade’s more expensive brands of whiskey. He’d been drinking for scarcely an hour before Sasuke shuffled in.

His face was drawn, and Naruto noted the stiff set of his shoulders. He stopped when he saw Naruto slouched in one of the chairs, feet up on a table.

“Pain?” Naruto asked.

“Yes,” Sasuke said shortly.

Naruto nodded. He slid the open bottle of whiskey across the table toward Sasuke, and he noticed Sasuke's hands were trembling a little when he took his first drink.

"I know why I'm awake," Sasuke said after he'd taken a few swallows. "Why are you?"

"Every time I close my eyes, someone else gets hurt," Naruto said simply. “I can’t let it happen again.”

"That's superstition," Sasuke said mildly.

"Probably," Naruto admitted. "Doesn’t matter.”

"Is that another Konoha trait?" Sasuke asked. "Superstition and legends and fealty and honor?”

"I guess," he said.

“You'd think we were living in a story book," Sasuke said. His hands were resting on the table, curved and relaxed, and Naruto traced the elegant shape of them with his eyes – the pale skin, the smooth play of the joints. He already had enough whiskey in him that he was teetering on the edge of tipsy and drunk, and he thought it might be dangerous to be here like this, watching Sasuke in the dark.

Like he was reading Naruto’s thoughts, Sasuke noted, “You’d be better off out searching than sitting here getting drunk like an idiot.”

It shouldn’t have stung, coming from someone like Sasuke, but it did. Naruto could feel his own uselessness flood his veins all over again, a constant throb of failure.

He looked away. “Someone needs to be here in case he comes back. You and Lee are both hurt.”

“Don’t forget Sai,” Sasuke said, a vicious edge to his voice. “You’ve been spending enough time with him; I expect you’d trust him with your life by now.”

Naruto blinked. Sasuke’s face was pinched, the first hint of a flush across his cheeks.

“He’s a piano player,” Naruto said cautiously. “I’m not sure what good you think he’d – ”

“He’s not a piano player,” Sasuke cut him off. “And you know it.”

Naruto couldn’t meet Sasuke’s eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Sasuke snorted. “He’s involved in this somehow. Ordinary piano players don’t act like he does. Lawmen and criminals do. You’re a fool to trust him.”

Naruto’s jaw jutted out. “Funny. He says the same thing about you.”

Sasuke’s black eyes narrowed. “Is that so?”

“Yeah. He says you know something you’re not telling.”

“The only thing I know,” Sasuke said coldly, “is that I prefer drinking alone.”

He shoved the bottle back toward Naruto with just a little too much force, and Naruto grimly caught it before it slid off the table altogether.

He pushed to his feet in a quick, violent motion, then gasped. Naruto saw him clutch at the wound on his chest, mouth twisting. He hunched over, and then he was swaying.

Naruto caught him before he fell, hands around his upper arms. Without those ridiculous boots Sasuke always wore, they really were almost equal height, he realized.

“Easy,” Naruto said in a low voice. “You’re still healing. Kakashi almost had a heart attack when he saw you walking around so soon.”

“Kakashi is a drunk and a hack,” Sasuke said, but his voice was faint. Naruto could feel the heat of him through layers of clothing. Sasuke shook his dark head once, clearing it. His voice was much stronger a moment later when he said, “Let me go.”

“Are you going to fall?” Naruto asked. “I’m not really in the mood to see you split your head open on the table.”

Sasuke turned his head, just enough for Naruto to see the look in his eyes. Naruto tried not to notice the way his hair touched his cheekbones, soft and glossy.

“Let me go,” he said again. There was a threat riding just beneath the tone.

“Fine,” Naruto said, frustrated. “Fine.” He took two steps away, separated himself from the only other warm thing in the whole chilly night. Sasuke gingerly pressed a hand against his chest, and Naruto felt it again – that awful, constricting fear of how close Sasuke Uchiha had come to dying. He didn't know what was worse - the feeling, or the fact that he felt it at all.

Sasuke took a deep, shuddering breath when he was free, bracing his hands against the table. His back made a smooth arch, lean and strong, and Naruto looked away. He dropped himself into his chair again, pretending he wasn’t looking for more signs that Sasuke was going to pass out in the middle of the dining room.

“You’re an asshole, you know?” Naruto said. “After what you’ve done – after what you did to  _me_ – I don’t know why I give a rat’s ass. Next time you faint like a girl, I’ll  _let_ you crack your head open.”

“I already told you why I did what I did.” Sasuke voice was flat and toneless, and Naruto swallowed his snarl.

“Right. Information. And I suppose that’s where you keep disappearing every day. Looking for clues.”

Sasuke said nothing.

“And I suppose you still think you’ll be the one to catch the murderer,” Naruto said in a louder voice, egged on by Sasuke’s silence and the ever-present disdain in his eyes.

“Well you won’t,” Naruto said forcefully. “I told you before – this is my town and this is my job. If almost  _dying_ wasn’t warning enough to you, then maybe – ”

“No,” Sasuke said.

“ ‘No’ what?” Naruto snapped.  _You impossible, arrogant prick_ , he added silently.

“I didn’t almost die.”

Naruto added  _insane_ to the list of insults steadily growing in his head. Sasuke was just barely looking at him out of the corner of one eye, his face even.

“Yes,” he said, with infinite patience. “You did. I was there. I watched Kakashi peel your bleeding body of Tsunade’s floor.”

“Itachi is still alive,” Sasuke said, straightening. “As long as he is, I will be, too.”

Naruto stared at him for a moment, speechless. “You’re not God,” he said finally. “You don’t get to pick.”

Sasuke’s expression didn’t shift. “The only reason I exist is to get revenge for my family,” he said. “Until that’s done, I won’t die. I can’t.”

Naruto wanted to pick him up by the shoulders and shake him. "And what about after, huh?"

Sasuke's eyes held nothing - no emotion, no fear. Empty.

"Doesn't matter," he said, and Naruto’s temper snapped.

“You idiot,” he barked, and Sasuke jumped. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Sasuke’s black brows snapped together, and he opened his mouth to respond, but Naruto overrode him. “What’s the point of it all if you have to live like that? Is that what your family would really want?”

“I have no choice,” Sasuke said stiffly. “I can't let Itachi live after what he did. I won't betray my family.”

“You’re betraying them by even worse by becoming like the person who killed him. That’s what you’re doing, right? Killing for money, using people for information – it’s all because of him. Don’t you think your family would want you to be a better man than that?”

“You don’t understand,” Sasuke said. “It’s the only way to beat him.”

“If you turn into him, you still haven’t beaten him,” Naruto said frankly.

Sasuke didn’t respond, and Naruto sank back into his chair, covering his face. “Christ. I  _wish_ Itachi would come back to Konoha so  _I_  could kill him.”

“I’d kill you if you tried,” Sasuke retorted, and Naruto groaned.

Sasuke was looking at him warily, like he wasn’t quite sure what Naruto would say next, but at least that lifeless expression was gone from his eyes.

Naruto couldn’t figure out whether punching him or kissing him would be more satisfying. He could still feel the alcohol like coating in his veins, laying a perfect filter over everything. Sasuke’s eyes looked just a little deeper than usual, his mouth just a little softer.

"Have you considered that this whole thing might be a waste of your time?” Naruto asked after a few moments. “That maybe it’s been Itachi causing all the trouble after all?”

Sasuke only snorted. "Strangling whores? Hardly. He wouldn't waste his time."

"What a guy," Naruto muttered. “Who  _wouldn’t_  want to be like him?”

"Sheriff Uzumaki," Sasuke said. His voice was brittle, but his smile was mocking. "So idealistic. You see everything in black and white, don’t you?"

"Hey," Naruto snapped. "Don’t compare us. Just because you couldn’t protect  _your_ family, doesn’t mean I should give up and become an outlaw, too.”

Sasuke's face drained of color.

Naruto went still, realization rushing through him. He was still trying to figure out a way to take back his words without _actually_ apologizing when he saw the black eyes snap in rage. Sasuke slammed a palm on the table, and the bottle rattled precariously.

"What do you know, anyway?" he seethed. "You and your town and your fucking legends and heroes. Not everyone's life is like that. I've had to make choices, and sacrifices that you can't even imagine. You have no idea what it's like, to have something so important, so goddamn consuming, that it's the only thing that mmmpphh - "

Sasuke's voice trailed off as Naruto smashed his lips against Sasuke’s, taking all of the anger and grief and the goddamn _desire_ that had been hounding him for weeks and pouring it into the kiss. He'd knotted his fist in Sasuke's collar, pulled him halfway across the table, and he kissed him now, bruising their mouths together.

He felt Sasuke's hand creep up to briefly cover his own. Then Sasuke pushed them apart and leaned against the table, panting. He still looked angry, and completely confused, and Naruto wanted to touch him – just kiss him and lick him and learn him with every part of his body. He wasn't sure what, exactly, was happening to him. Maybe he was a sodomist after all, or maybe he just wanted to shut Sasuke up. Maybe he'd seen one too many people get hurt in the last few weeks. Stress could do funny things to a man.

He wouldn't be surprised if the rumors were true, and Sasuke really was a sorcerer. The taste of him had gotten into Naruto's blood, and it was hard to concentrate on much else.

"Moron," Sasuke said, face hard and angry, and then he kissed Naruto again.

It hurt; Sasuke wasn't gentle. He nipped at Naruto's lips, pressed his nails into exposed skin, backed them up against the table until their erections were bumping together. Naruto moaned when Sasuke's lips found his neck, and he realized the gunfighter was putting his mouth in the same place as he had the first time, marking him all over again.

He slid his hands up Sasuke's sides, under the gunfighter's shirt. He felt bony under Naruto's fingers, ribs and stomach muscles melded together under a layer of smooth skin. The long fingers were pulling at his hair, tugging at his shoulders, trying to bring them closer. Naruto gripped Sasuke's sides, and Sasuke abandoned his pulling in favor of sliding his fingers down the front of Naruto's pants.

Naruto lifted his mouth to let out a long, tortured groan. Sasuke's fingers were pressed cool and tight against him, and Naruto thrust his hips without thinking.

Someone banged on the door.

Naruto froze for an agonized second, caught between lust and panic. The knock came again, and Sasuke shoved Naruto so hard he lost his balance and fell flat on his butt.

"Sheriff?" Neji Hyuuga called out, muffled through the thick wood of the front door. "I have to talk to you."

*

  
"Can't say I was expecting you," Naruto said.

"Didn't plan on being here," Neji said. His face was calm, but Naruto could sense the discomfort beneath the facade. The discomfort of someone with something to hide.

Or someone with something to confess.

Neji returned his unblinking stare across the table. The man had been quite insistent that he speak to Naruto alone. Sasuke had stonily refused to leave them until Neji had gotten so flustered that he threatened to leave instead. Naruto had had to physically force Sasuke from the room, and he wouldn't be surprised if the gunfighter was listening through the cracks in the walls. He could still smell Sasuke on his clothes and his skin, and he wondered if Neji could, too. Thank god there hadn't been time for Sasuke to leave another mark.

"Well?" Naruto said.

Neji shifted. "I have to tell you. About Hinata."

"Didn't know there was anything to tell. She was cast out, last I heard."

"That wasn't my decision," Neji said sharply.

Naruto said nothing.

"She…" Neji swallowed, looked away. "She was better off anyway. She wasn't treated well."

"Why are you telling me this?" Naruto said evenly.

"I just want you to understand," Neji said quietly. "Uncle would throw me out just as easily if he knew I was here. You're not what I’d call popular with my family.”

“I gathered.”

“There's been talk that maybe you can't uphold the town,” Neji continued. “Maybe a Hyuuga would do better."

"They can certainly try," Naruto said. He was amazed at how flat his voice sounded, despite the anger rolling through him. Sasuke was rubbing off on him, he supposed.

"I don't care either way," Neji said. "But Hinata...she never had any choice. Not in what happened with the family, and not in how she died, and I just..."

"Why are you here?" Naruto asked bluntly. "If it's to say how sorry you are, then you should be talking to Tsunade. That who her real family was."

"You're trying to solve the murder," Neji said, and his voice sounded odd. Unsteady. "And I have information. A few days before the murders, Uncle took on a new employee. I don't know his name, and I don't know where he came from.”

"And?"

"Last week, he disappeared."

Naruto slouched into his chair, studying the man across from him. “Why didn’t you come as soon as you suspected?”

Neji ran an agitated hand through his hair. “I told you…Uncle… And I did try. I was here.”

Naruto remembered him, standing pale and wide-eyed in the door to Tsunade’s kitchen. “I suppose you were. You turned tail and ran, though.”

Neji hunched forward. In all the years Naruto had known him, he’d never been anything but precise and cold. Now he was sweating, disheveled.

“I heard something,” he said in a low voice. “When I came. I heard the new piano player say something about not sleeping…not closing his eyes.”

“That was a private conversation you were eavesdropping on,” Naruto reminded him. Neji didn’t look up.

“The employee – the one who disappeared. He never stuck out to me except for one thing. He never slept. The housekeeper reported that his loft in the stables was untouched, and I saw him once, out the window at night, walking back and forth across the fields. He didn’t stop for hours.”

Naruto’s heart was pounding. A stranger…who’d appeared at the right time…who didn’t sleep.

"Neji," Naruto said. "What did he look like?”

He saw Neji swallow again. “Small. Red hair. Green eyes. Strange symbol tattooed on his forehead.”

Naruto closed his eyes. He called up the night that the murderer had broken into his room, had watched him, for god knew how long, as he slept. When he’d woken up, he’d seen the figure for a split second – just one moment in the stillness.

The eyes watching him had been a pale green.

Neji finally looked up, and Naruto could feel the desolation in the rancher’s eyes straight through to his bones.

“It’s him, isn’t it?” Neji said hoarsely. “Hinata’s killer. And he was right there the whole time.”

“Do you have any idea where he would have gone?” Naruto asked urgently. “Did anyone ever visit him, or…”

Neji was shaking his head. “He almost never talked. He called himself Jones, although we all knew it was a fake name. But that’s common out here. He was with two others when he arrived, but they left without him, over a month ago.”

Naruto’s throat felt thick. “I don’t suppose anyone else disappeared around that time? Any workhands?”

Neji looked at him, startled. “One,” Neji said, and Naruto took a deep breath.

“Was he the same height as Jones?”

The answer was written in the dawning realization on Neji’s face.

Neji was still talking when Naruto showed him to the door. He supposed the man had been holding it inside for weeks.

"You have to solve it," Neji said fiercely. "Hinata deserves that much." His face looked like it had aged ten years in an hour’s time.

"You were in love with her," Naruto said suddenly, and Neji looked away. Naruto wasn't sure how he knew. He'd never had much of an instinct for those sorts of things. "Remarkably dense" was Sakura's more frank wording. But he figured it had to be something powerful turning Neji upside down.

"No one but Kakashi knew," Neji said. "I'd appreciate it if it stayed that way."

"Kakashi?" Naruto asked. "Why Kakashi?"

"Because," Neji said. "She was carrying my child when she died."


	8. Chapter 7

“Did you hear?” Naruto asked from the doorway of the bedroom.

“I heard,” Sasuke said quietly.

“He said the man arrived right before Hinata died. Two people with him. I’ll go down to the Hyuuga operation tomorrow morning, see if I can find out anything else.” Naruto said.

“Fine.”

“You could come, instead of sneaking off by yourself.”

“We’ll see,” Sasuke said.

He’d changed out of his clothes and was halfway under the covers, one lamp lit in the room. He had Tsunade's tattered Bible open in his lap. How odd, Naruto thought distantly, that someone like Sasuke would want to read the Bible every night.

Naruto could see brown spots flaking off the front of his undershirt, and he realized Sasuke’s stitches must have busted open earlier when they…

Earlier.

“Well,” Naruto said awkwardly. “Then. Goodn– ”

“You have scars on your face,” Sasuke interrupted, like Naruto had never seen his own reflection.

“Knife marks,” Naruto said automatically. It was his stock answer.

Sasuke just snorted. “Liar,” he said. “Those are from claws.”

Naruto scowled, annoyance immediately dispelling his discomfort. “How would you know?”

Sasuke reached out and traced one. “Too symmetrical.” Naruto held very still as the pads of Sasuke’s fingers trailed lightly over his cheek.

“Fox cub,” Naruto said when he could finally speak. He cleared his throat. “I was five and thought it would be fun to play with. It was, until mother fox found us.”

“They look like whiskers,” Sasuke mused.

Naruto took a deep breath, braced himself, and spoke. “You too,” he said.

Sasuke raised an eyebrow.

“Scars,” he clarified. He seated himself on the edge of the bed and flipped up the hem of Sasuke’s shirt. There was a round scar from a bullet, marring the pale skin just above the hip. “I saw it after Kakashi operated on you,” he said sheepishly.

“Itachi,” Sasuke said simply, and Naruto winced.

“Right,” he said. He pointed to another one, jagged and faded on the upper arm. “What about that one?”

“Itachi,” Sasuke said again, and at first Naruto thought Sasuke must have misheard, that he was answering the same question twice. But he looked up to see Sasuke looking studiously away.

“That one?” Naruto asked in a harder voice, pointing again. Knowing the answer.

Sasuke just looked at him, eyes dark and empty.

Naruto swore under his breath. “How many?” he asked.

“Seven at last count,” Sasuke said coolly.

“How nice,” Naruto said sarcastically. “Why doesn’t he just shoot your thumbs off and end the whole thing? No use chasing him if you can’t hold a gun."

“He never shoots to kill,” Sasuke said, "and he never goes for the hands. It’s a game to him. He  _wants_ me to chase him.”

“Then why do you do it?” Naruto exploded. “Don’t let him have his way. If you really want to piss him off then just forget about him.”

“He took my family from me,” Sasuke said, and they’d already had already argued about it once that night, so Naruto shut his mouth.

“If you say you’re sorry,” Sasuke continued. “I’ll put a bullet through your heart.”

It was possibly the weakest threat Sasuke had made yet. His gun was locked away in Naruto’s safe, he was dressed in nothing but his underthings, and he was still alarmingly pale from his own bullet wound.

Naruto didn’t bait him, though. “I’ll help you find him,” he heard himself say. “When this is all over. I’ll help you track him down, I promise.”

Sasuke looked startled. “Why?”

“Because…” Naruto cast around for the words, at a loss. “Because it’s not  _right_. He shouldn’t get away with what he did. As long as he’s out there, Konoha isn’t safe, either.

For a moment, Sasuke almost looked like he wanted to accept. But then he shook his head. “No,” he said. “I have to do it. It can’t be anyone else.”

Naruto didn’t argue. There was a strange beauty to Sasuke’s face in the flickering light. His hair fell on either side of his face, bracketing it in a dramatic contrast of white on black. He was all monochrome – dark eyes and pale skin and sharp, graceful lines. Naruto couldn’t stop tracing the slope of his shoulders with his own eyes, the way his neck curved, how strange and smooth his skin looked.

Sasuke was returning his stare, face wary. “What?” he said.

“I want to kiss you,” Naruto confessed without thinking. Sasuke’s expression didn’t change. “Will that get me a bullet, too?” he asked without much enthusiasm.

Sasuke’s eyelids lowered. “One way to find out,” he said.

Naruto leaned forward, trying not to disturb the weird hush that had fallen over them. He touched his lips to Sasuke’s, slow and gentle, the way he would kiss a girl.

But Sasuke wasn’t a girl, and when his hands came up to cradle Naruto’s neck, Naruto could feel the strength there, the wide span of his palms. He tasted familiar – all whiskey and gunpowder and bitterness – and Naruto let his tongue sweep in to find more.

He felt a hard presence rising against his hip, insistent. “How do we do this?” he murmured, never totally breaking the contact of their mouths.

“Pay attention,” Sasuke said. “I better not have to explain this twice.”

*

  
Sex with a man was different. Not bad. Quite good, actually. Naruto didn’t  _feel_ like he was going straight to hell for it, although the law and the church said differently.

And Sasuke didn’t seem to hate it, either, which Naruto didn’t quite understand. He got to look at the long line of Sasuke’s back, the angle of his hips, the way he was white and marble-smooth all over. Sasuke just got a face full of bedcovers.

He was making noises, though, and Naruto didn’t think they were bad noises. He gave a little moan every time Naruto thrust, and he even thrust back, wriggling in a way that stopped Naruto's breath in his throat. He looped an arm around Sasuke's stomach as he slowly pressed in and out, careful to avoid the thick bandaging from Sasuke's surgery. He put his tongue between Sasuke's shoulder blades, and he felt Sasuke shiver.

It was messy, when he finally came, and strange, but Naruto was far too caught up in the moment to care either way. Sasuke turned over to stare up at him through glazed eyes, and Naruto could see how uneven his breathing was, how unfocused his pupils. He touched Sasuke's erection lightly, and Sasuke swallowed.

Naruto stroked him the way he had stroked Naruto the first night they met, only there was no violence between them now, no hatred. There was just sex, and curiosity, and maybe, Naruto thought, a little bit of trust, too. He would settle for sex, though, if that was all it was. He touched every hollow and curve he could reach on Sasuke’s body, and he kissed Sasuke on the mouth when Sasuke arched up and came into his hands.

*

  
He told Sasuke everything in the end. He still didn't know who Sasuke was - not really. If the stories were true, then Sasuke really was a killer, every bit as bad the murderer plaguing Konoha. But Naruto couldn’t shake the conviction that Sasuke was really more like an untamed horse. You just had to get kicked a few times to get close.

He watched Sasuke's face as he spoke, looking for signs of interest or surprise. It was flat and unchanging, and it only took a few minutes to realize he wasn't relating anything new.

"You asshole," Naruto said. "You knew the whole time."

Sasuke didn't even blink. "You're a shitty storyteller. You left out all the good parts."

Naruto wasn't sure if he was more pissed or relieved. At least he had an ally now - someone else who knew the whole story.

Still.

"Bastard." He reached across the space between them to give Sasuke's shoulder a shove, but Sasuke caught his hand. A second later he felt the warm touch of Sasuke's tongue on the skin of his wrist, and then he was on his back, staring up.

Sasuke was looking down at him with more intensity than he'd ever seen in the black eyes. The look on his face was almost ferocious, and Naruto swallowed.

"What?" he asked nervously.

Sasuke leaned down and kissed him, and Naruto jerked up in surprise. He felt Sasuke's hands forcing him back down to the mattress, Sasuke's tongue on his neck.

Light fingers slid down, down, down his chest, brushed along the ridges of his hips to take his length in hands. Naruto turned his head into the pillow, trying to keep his breathing even. He could feel Sasuke on every part of him, knees hugging his thighs, hands on his arms, mouth and hair and skin trailing along the sensitive skin of his stomach.

He felt something warm and wet slide around his erection, and then Sasuke was sucking, pulling so firmly and rhythmically that Naruto couldn't smother a moan.

Sasuke's fingers touched his palm, curling gently. Naruto locked their hands together, clasped so tightly that Sasuke couldn't jerk away. Then Sasuke somehow shifted, took him even deeper, and everything else faded away under the torrent of sensation.

*

  
Naruto didn't know how long he slept. All he knew was that it was still pitch black outside the window when he sat straight up in bed, heart pounding.

"How did he get out of Tsunade's room?"

Sasuke turned to look at him. 'What?" he said.

"The doors only lock from the inside, but I had to break down her door to get in. So how did he get from her room to mine after he knocked her out?"

Sasuke was by the dresser, hands on his belt buckle. His face was blank.

"The only other way out," Naruto said, "is the window."

"It's the second floor," Sasuke said cautiously. "He might be able to survive a jump out of the window, but how would he get in? He can't fly."

A memory flashed in Naruto's mind: Lee and Sai leaning over the edge of Tsunade's roof, peering down.

"The roofs," Naruto said hoarsely. "He's using the roofs."

"There's no way - "

" _No_ ," Naruto said forcefully. "Konoha's roofs are - wait, what are you doing awake?"

"Never mind that," Sasuke said. "What are you babbling about?"

Naruto tugged on his hair in agitation. "The roofs are flat, don't you get it? If he climbed up the side when no one was looking, he could spend all day up there. As long as he was quiet, no one would know. No one would see. He could  _sleep_ up there if - " He stopped.

Naruto saw Sasuke's face shift into comprehension. "No one would see him," he said slowly, "and he wouldn't see anyone else. If you're lying on the roof and staring up, you can't see the ground."

"You can’t see the sand," Naruto finished grimly. "That's where he's been sleeping."

Sasuke's eyes locked with his for a long moment.

“Shit.” Naruto shoved the covers aside and started searching for his clothes. “We have to go down there now. He might still be there, right under Neji's nose."

Naruto could almost feel the blood rushing through his veins, every bit of anger and grief and helplessness that he'd gone through in the last month turning up fresh. This was it. He could  _feel_ it.

He didn't even bother tucking his shirt into his pants. He pulled on his suspenders and gun belt, searching for where his revolver must have slid out onto the floor.

It wasn't until he'd scoured the room twice for the weapon that he realized how silent the space around him had become. Slowly, slowly, he turned his head.

His gun was in Sasuke's hands, trained directly on him. Naruto blinked. "That's my gun," he said dumbly.

"Not anymore," Sasuke said. "I'm taking it."

"What are you doing?" Naruto asked, bewildered.

He tossed a length of rope in Naruto's direction, and Naruto caught it. "Tie yourself to that chair."

"What?" Naruto said. He wondered if his brain was maybe still half-asleep after all.

"I'm going," Sasuke said, "and you're not coming with me."

"Like hell!"

"Naruto," Sasuke said in a more threatening voice. "Tie yourself up. Don't make me knock you out again."

Naruto scrambled to his feet, and Sasuke's hands tightened on the weapon. "Are you crazy?" Naruto said. "What the hell are you trying to do?"

"I told you before," Sasuke said. "This is the only way I'll ever catch Itachi. This is why I came to Konoha in the first place. I have to finish it."

"Then stop talking so damn much and give me my gun," Naruto exclaimed. "Let's go."

"If you come, you'll just get in the way," Sasuke said calmly, and Naruto reared back, stung.

"Get in the way of what?" he asked hotly. "You dying? Because that's what will happen if you try and go out there alone. You haven't even healed from the last time you were shot."

Sasuke flinched, but he didn't lower the gun. "Tie yourself up," he said again.

Naruto shook his head stubbornly.

Even injured, Sasuke moved fast. Naruto stumbled back as Sasuke lunged for him, grabbed a wrist, and slammed it against the bed post.

" _Ow_ ," Naruto said, annoyed. "That - " He froze. His arm wouldn't move. He gave it another tug, then looked. Sasuke had cuffed him to the bedpost. With his own handcuffs.

Naruto was speechless for a moment. Then he said, "I'm going to kill you."

Sasuke smiled. "I've heard that before." His voice was strangely gentle, at odds with the violence in the room.

"What about your brother?" Naruto insisted. "This is a suicide mission if you go alone. I thought you weren't going to die until you mmmph..."

Sasuke kissed him, long and hard. Then, while Naruto's head was still swimming from that, he shoved a kerchief in Naruto's mouth and tied it tight.

"I might die," he said, "but you're not going to."

The barrel of the gun met Naruto's temple, and everything went black.

*

  
Hanging, Naruto thought. No, not hanging. Stoning, maybe. Or maybe just a good old-fashioned lynch mob. There were at least a hundred different ways he could kill Sasuke Uchiha, and that was  _after_ he spent a few hours beating him to a pulp.

He tested his arms and legs. No movement. Sasuke had cuffed both wrists around the bedpost and used rope on his ankles. The moon was still visible outside the window, and it would be hours before anyone stirred. He had no choice then.

He started rocking back and forth, feeling the mattress springs crunch underneath him. He gave a particularly hard bounce, and the bed frame thumped against the wall. Good.

He did it a few more times. Thump, thump, thump. He was starting to get tired from all the thrashing around, but he thought he heard a door opening down the hall.

_Thump, thump, thump, thump_.

Running footsteps, and then Ino threw the door open triumphantly.

"See?" she said to Sakura. "I told you they were having se- oh." She crossed her arms. "Did someone have a fight?"

"Mmmph," Naruto said angrily.

"Naruto!" Sakura hurried over and loosened the gag.

Naruto spit it out. "Stupid…fucking… _gunfighter_."

  
*

  
"Tell Kakashi," Naruto told Tsunade. "No one else."

Tsunade's eyes were worried. "Shouldn't you wait until daylight? You could get a few more people from town, go in numbers..."

"No," Naruto said firmly. "No one else gets hurt. Including that asshole."

He had sent Ino to wake Sai, and she came back now, hurrying along the hallway.

"He was gone," she said breathlessly. "He must have overheard and left already. Here." She shoved a small stack of paper into Naruto's hands. "This was on his bed. I think he's been lying to us."

Naruto looked down. There was a Federal Bureau of Investigation seal done in wax at the top of the letter. Underneath were succinct assassination instructions and a small rendering. The rendering was in black ink, outlining the portrait of a man not much older than Naruto. His long hair and dark eyes stood out in plain contrast to the red-haired, green-eyed description that Neji had given of Gaara.

"Yes," Naruto said grimly. "He's been lying." He pocked the papers.

"Uchiha is a gunfighter. And Sai is...something," Tsunade said. "They're both used to this sort of thing. Maybe you leave it up to him." She was trying to hold on to a calm tone, but her hands were shaking.

Naruto tried to smile. "Don’t worry, granny. Jiraiya pinned the star on me for a reason. I’ll be all right.”

Tsunade swallowed. "All right," she said finally. "Just...just come back alive."

Naruto wanted to promise, but he couldn’t. “Get Kakashi sobered up and ready,” he said instead, and pushed his way through the saloon doors.

Naruto figured Sasuke must have overestimated his rope-tying abilities, because he didn’t even bother to cover his tracks. Two trails - his and Sai's - were clearly visible running side by side. Naruto followed them straight out of town, through a stretch of sparse fields, and right to the door of the Hyuuga stables.

Sasuke had stolen Naruto’s horse, so Naruto was forced to take Lee’s instead. Fortunately, the animal was as accommodating as Lee himself, sweet and easy-going. Unfortunately, it moved at about half the speed of Naruto’s own horse. Light was beginning to creep over the horizon by the time Naruto made it to the Hyuugas.

One set of tracks took a sharp turn at the edges of the compound, and Naruto followed them on instinct. The hoof prints grew scattered after a few hundred feet, and a while after that, Nartuo could make out the shape of human prints. Two different humans.

He dismounted, gun drawn, and followed them carefully around the corner of a small storage shack.

Sai was propped up against the outer wall, unmoving. His eyes were wide and staring, and there was a bullet hole marking the center of his forehead.

Naruto swallowed, moving closer. The wood behind Sai’s head was spattered in blood, and his gun had fallen from his hand. Naruto leaned down and shut Sai’s blank eyes, fighting back nausea. He pocketed the gun, and then he kept moving.

He found his horse was tied to the outpost by the main stables. The brown coat was still damp with sweat; Sasuke couldn’t have been too far ahead. Naruto listened intently for a minute, but everything was quiet.

Until he heard the sound of a safety click directly behind him.

“I guess your head’s even thicker than I thought,” Sasuke said.

Naruto turned. Sasuke was watching him, finger on the trigger.

“I left you behind for a reason,” he continued. “This isn’t your fight.”

“You left me behind because you’re a jackass with an obsession for revenge,” Naruto said frankly. “And you did a shitty job. I can untie ropes, you know.”

"I'll have to remember that." Sasuke took a step back, lowered the gun.

"Did you kill Sai?" Naruto asked, mildly surprised that his voice didn't shake.

Sasuke's eyebrows snapped together. "What?"

"He was following you, and now he's dead. Did you shoot him?"

Sasuke's jaw tightened, and he looked away. "I have no reason to kill some as insignificant as that."

"That's not what I asked."

"It wasn't me," Sasuke snapped. "Happy?"

Naruto studied his stiff posture for a moment, the clench of his jaw. "I believe you," he said, and he saw Sasuke's shoulders relax. He added, “That means he’s here.”

Sasuke flicked the safety back into place, lowered the gun. “I know,” he said. “Go home. Come back in a few hours and this will all be over.”

Naruto thought Sasuke had issued just about enough orders for a lifetime. He waited until the gun was tucked securely into Sasuke’s holster, and then he punched Sasuke square across the jaw.

Sasuke stumbled back a few steps.

“You moron,” Naruto raged. “You completely stupid, suicidal jackass.” Sasuke made a move for the gun again, but Naruto was too angry to care. He launched himself at Sasuke, and they both went down in the dirt.

“I’m gonna kill you,” Naruto seethed. “I’m sick of you butting in on  _my_ town and  _my_ fights without  _my_  permission.”

Naruto got a hand on the gun and yanked. Sasuke caught his wrist, quick as a rattler, but Naruto shoved the fingers of his other hand against Sasuke’s newly healed bullet wound. Sasuke gasped, and his grip slackened.

“I was here first,” Naruto said through gritted teeth. “And I’ll be here when you ride away or when Itachi shoots you between the eyes or when whatever-the-fuck is going to happen to you happens. So don’t you tell me what I can and can’t do.”

He punched Sasuke again, and Sasuke went face-first into the dirt. Naruto stood, gun securely in hand and pointed at Sasuke. “You’re not going to do this by yourself and you’re not going to die and you’re not going to tie me up ever again,  _got it_?”

Sasuke struggled painfully to his feet. His mouth was bleeding, and his eyes were furious. “What? You’re going to shoot me now?” he said.

Naruto released the safety. “Once I can get over. Twice, and I kick your ass.”

“Put that down,” Sasuke said dismissively. “Unless you’re planning to use me for target practice, just – ”

Naruto fired. The bullet grazed Sasuke across the upper arm, tearing through clothing and skin, but nothing else.

Sasuke grabbed for his arm, then blinked up at Naruto. “You shot me,” he said. “You complete  _idiot_ , I’m on your side!”

Naruto tucked his gun away. His fingers were still trembling. There was blood on Sasuke’s sleeve, and Naruto imagined it would leave a scar.

“There,” he said. “Now you have one from me. Don't ever leave me behind again.”

The sound of footsteps above them was almost inaudible, but not quite. Naruto's head whipped around, but there was no one. Sasuke had gone similarly still.

"Up," he mouthed to Sasuke. He reached into his vest and pulled out Sai’s gun. He passed it soundlessly to Sasuke, and Sasuke took it.

Very slowly, through some unspoken communication, they began to move toward the corners of the building. Naruto scanned the flat ridge of the roof, looking for movement.

Nothing.

He glanced over at Sasuke. The gunfighter’s face was turned upward as well, pinched in its concentration.

The dirt exploded just inches from Naruto’s feet as a bullet plowed into the ground beside him. Sasuke yelled something and then his eyes caught the figure running, sprinting across the roof tops. The runner leaped into the air, impossibly graceful, and then he was gone over the back of the building.

“Shit.” Naruto took off, Sasuke close on his heels.

The land behind the stables was open and barren, not a bush or tree to hide in. Their murderer had vanished.

“Over there,” Naruto panted, bracing his hands on his knees. He pointed to the closest building – a small chicken coop in the distance.

Sasuke shook his head. Despite his injuries, he was barely winded, and Naruto figured that was just another reason to kick his ass later.

“Too far. Even if he was on horseback. We would have seen him.”

“He had to have gone somewhere,” Naruto said, frustrated.

“No. He’s still here.”

Sasuke began edging along the side of the building. Naruto started to follow, but Sasuke stopped him with a sharp look. He jabbed his finger in the other direction.

At first Naruto thought Sasuke was telling him to get lost, and he opened his mouth to tell the gunfighter to fuck off. Then he realized what Sasuke meant. If they circled in opposite directions, Gaara would have no place to run without leaving the shelter of the stables.

“Stay close to the building,” Sasuke whispered. “So he can’t catch you from behind.”

Naruto crept as noiselessly as possible along the wall, although the annoyed looks Sasuke was shooting him indicted he was  _still_ being too loud.

He went around the corner gun first.

Nothing.

He was halfway toward the front again when he saw it – the ladder built into the outer wall. It was a common practice west of the Mississippi. A permanent ladder made it easy for an owner to climb up for repairs and leaks. Almost every building in Konoha had one.

A Hyuuga hand or someone else had painted it the same slate gray as the rest of the building, making it blend smoothly into the siding. It had wide planks for steps, safe and solid. Easy to shimmy up with speed if you knew the spacing well.

They’d fallen into a trap.

Gaara had lured them close to the building by letting them see him jump off. Instead of running, he’d climbed right back up and waited for them. He wasn’t planning to attack from behind. He was planning to attack from above.

Naruto swore loudly, turning on his heels and running back toward Sasuke. He’d barely taken three steps when he heard a commotion. A gunshot, the sound of bodies hitting the ground, and then nothing.

He rounded the corner again, heart pounding.

Sasuke was backed against the wall, gun lying uselessly in the dirt. He was pinned, one pale hand around his throat, another pressing a black gun barrel flush against his forehead. His face was twisted in murderous, helpless rage, and his skin was starting to tinge blue from lack of oxygen. Naruto could see his fists, clenched at his sides.

He looked more pissed than scared that the life was being choked out of him, and somehow, in the midst of all his fear and outrage and adrenaline, Naruto realized he still had a little room for exasperation.

Gaara of the Desert turned his head just slightly toward Naruto, and Naruto saw the way his hand tightened even further on Sasuke’s throat.

“Sheriff Uzumaki,” he said, voice flat and eerie. “We finally meet.”


	9. Chapter 8

Naruto didn’t stop to think. He steadied his gun, took aim, and fired.  
  
He missed, of course; he wasn’t Sasuke. The bullet sparked off the brick wall just inches from Sasuke’s head, and Naruto could have sworn Sasuke glared at him.  
  
He didn’t hit Gaara, but he got close enough that the redhead jerked backwards, dropping his hand from Sasuke’s throat. Sasuke doubled over, coughing. Naruto saw him scrabble for his fallen gun, but Gaara just kicked it even further away.  
  
“Two,” Gaara said. “This will be interesting.”  
  
“You don’t have to worry about him,” Naruto said evenly. “I’m the one you need to deal with.”  
  
The face turned to him was ordinary at best. Light eyes, red hair, pale skin - just as Neji had described. The expression, though… Naruto wasn’t sure how anyone could look at Gaara’s face and not be afraid. There was nothing in his eyes but death. His gun was still pointed at Gaara, but Gaara’s was still pointed at Sasuke, and Naruto figured that put him at a pretty damn steep disadvantage.  
  
Gaara cocked his head toward Sasuke again, and Sasuke regarded him frigidly. Naruto could see the grim tilt of Sasuke’s mouth, clear across the space separating them.  
  
“I’ve never fought friends before,” Gaara said, voice like gravel. “I want to kill you both.”  
  
Naruto could feel his teeth grinding together. “We’re not friends,” he forced out. “He’s just a stranger butting in on my territory.”  
  
“Your town, you mean. The one you fight so hard for.” For all the curiosity in the words, Gaara’s voice didn’t even change pitch.  
  
Naruto took a deep breath. “Yes.”  
  
“Would you care?” Gaara asked, with something like fascination in his eyes. “If he was the next one who died?”  
  
“What I care about, is that you’ve you’ve attacked Konoha. I’m going to make you pay for that, no matter what.” The words sounded rock-steady to his own ears, and he only wished his insides matched the tone. The truth was, he could feel sweat running in rivulets down his back, and his hands were shaking. If Gaara were to fire that gun…  
  
“I wanted to kill the pink-haired one,” Gaara continued, ignoring Naruto’s statement entirely. “I could tell she was your favorite. But he interrupted me.” He turned to look at Sasuke again. Sasuke’s face was absolutely expressionless. “What would you do?”  
  
Naruto tensed as Gaara steadied the gun.  
  
“I think I want to find out,” he said, and fired.  
  
Naruto heard the agonized yell rip from his own throat, registered the flash of gunpowder and explosion of noise. He stumbled two steps toward Sasuke, then froze.  
  
Sasuke had managed, somehow, to get a hand around Gaara’s wrist. The bullet had buried itself in the wall next to him, just inches from his right ear. Naruto could see the two of them grappling against the building, deadly intent on both their faces.  
  
“Shit, shit, shit,” Naruto mumbled, bringing his gun up again. He tried to follow the movement of Gaara’s head, but both of them were weaving in unpredictable directions, struggling blindly in an attempt to get a grip on the weapon.  
  
He saw Gaara plow a knee into Sasuke’s stomach. Sasuke’s face didn’t even twitch.  
  
“Naruto,” Sasuke wheezed. “Shoot. Him.”  
  
Had their situations been revered, Sasuke would have been able to make the kill in seconds. Naruto could barely keep his hands steady.  
  
“I’m trying,” Naruto said, sweating. “Stop moving.”  
  
Gaara’s face was very close to Sasuke’s, and there was an unsettling grin on his lips. “You’re almost as fast as your brother,” he said, and his flat voice had nearly softened to a purr. “But not quite.”  
  
“Fuck you,” Sasuke snarled. “Naruto,  _shoot him_.”  
  
“I don’t want to hit you,” Naruto said desperately. Gaara yanked, and the gun flew out of Sasuke’s hands.  
  
“Then don’t,” Sasuke raged. “Shoot him,  _now_.”  
  
Naruto fired.  
  
He knew right away that he had missed again. This time, though, the bullet didn’t go wide. Instead of hitting Gaara between the eyes, it hit the gun. The weapon ripped out of Gaara’s fingers and went skidding across the dirt.  
  
Gaara clutched at his hand, and Sasuke took the opportunity to punch him across the jaw. Gaara went down, and Sasuke leaned back against the wall, breathing hard. Naruto saw him touch his chest gingerly, and he realized for the first time that there were new bloodstains across Sasuke’s shirt from where his stitches must have opened again.  
  
“Don’t move,” Naruto said to Gaara, inching closer. He was proud that his voice didn’t even shake. His heart was beating somewhere around his tonsils. From the corner of his eye, he saw Sasuke moving toward him, using the wall for support.  
  
Gaara dragged himself up from the dirt very slowly, back toward them. From his angled view, Naruto could see the fingers of his right hand, twisted and swollen from where the gun had been shot out of them. His palm was covered in blood.  
  
“Hands up,” Naruto ordered.  
  
“No time,” Sasuke said from beside him. “Do it.” It sounded like it took effort for him to speak.  
  
Naruto ignored him. Gaara’s head was inclined downward, staring at his injured fingers.  
  
“My hand,” he heard Gaara say in disbelief. “You hurt my hand.”  
  
Naruto grit his teeth. “You’re under arrest for the murder of four Konoha citizens. Now turn around and put your  _hands up_.”  
  
“Three,” Gaara said absently, still mesmerized by the blood running between his fingers. “Two whores and a nobody.” It seemed an odd thing to say; Naruto couldn’t think of a single reason for Gaara to lie.  
  
“If you miss, he’ll run,” Sasuke said urgently. “Give me the gun.”  
  
“Shut up,” Naruto snapped. “Stop talking and turn around,” he yelled to Gaara.  
  
Gaara turned. His face was still expressionless, but there was something vicious in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. Crazier.  
  
Sasuke’s gun – Sai’s gun – was in his hands.  
  
 _Shit_. Naruto fired, but it was much, much too late. Gaara’s returning bullet hit him square in the shoulder. Naruto’s world seemed to shatter into shades of red as the molten metal tore through skin and muscle. Sasuke caught him before the impact knocked him off his feet, but Gaara was already running.  
  
“Shit,” Naruto said, struggling upright. He wondered, briefly, if he was going to pass out. There were dark blotches swimming across his vision, and his neck and shoulder were one throbbing mass of agony. His left arm would be useless.  
  
“I told you,” Sasuke breathed, but his words didn’t match the blank fear on his face. Naruto figured he’d take time to enjoy that memory later.  
  
“Come on,” he said. “He didn’t get my gun hand.” He stumbled forward, in the direction that Gaara had gone.  
  
“Wait,” Sasuke said, white-faced. “Your shoulder is dislocated. You can’t just – ”  
  
Naruto blocked out the pain. Sasuke had two gunshot wounds, Naruto reminded himself, and he was still on his feet. He’d would be damned if he let one little bullet defeat him when he was so close.  
  
He heard Sasuke swearing behind him. “Idiot,” Sasuke said savagely. “If you pass out, I’ll leave you behind.”  
  
“Then I won’t,” Naruto said, and kept running.  
  
Gaara had disappeared around the corner of the stables, but Naruto wasn’t about to be fooled by the same trick twice. He kept a good distance between himself and the building, scanning the roof out of the corner of his eye. He felt Sasuke at his back, doing the same.  
  
“This is bad,” Sasuke said in a low voice. “He has cover and we have none. He could take us out from a distance any time. We have to – ”  
  
“No,” Naruto said, morbidly certain. “He won’t do it that way. He’ll want to see our faces.”  
  
“You learn quickly,” a voice behind them said. Naruto whirled, then doubled over as a thousand needles clawed at his face.  
  
 _Sand_ , he realized, trying to shield his head. That fucking maniac had thrown sand at them. He wasn’t sure which was worse – the blinding pain in his eyes, or the pieces of rock and dirt grinding into the raw skin of his shoulder. He heard Sasuke coughing next to him, choking on a mouthful of the grainy stuff. Five strong fingers took a hold of his wrist, slamming it back against the wall, and his gun dropped from his fingers.  
  
He made a desperate grab, but something hard collided with his stomach, and everything went hazy for a long moment. When his vision finally cleared, he saw Sasuke on his knees, scrubbing the last of the sand from his eyes. Naruto leaned back against the wall, trying to suck in air through pain in his ribs.  
  
Their tormentor stood ten feet away, Naruto’s gun pointed directly at them. Naruto looked around him, but there was nothing left. They were out of weapons, ideas, energy. Sasuke was bleeding from his chest and his arm, and Naruto’s shoulder felt like fire, festering around the bone.  
  
“You lied,” Gaara said. “You  _are_ friends. You tried to help each other.”  
  
 _Think_ , Naruto told himself desperately. He had to consciously stop himself from pressing back against the wall like a trapped rat.  _There has to be something, some way…_  
  
“And you made me bleed,” he continued. “I hate that. Whenever one of the whores scratches me, I make it hurt more.”  
  
“You can’t kill us both,” Sasuke said. His voice sounded raspy. “One of us, maybe. But you’ll have to reload.”  
  
All Naruto could see was Jiraiya’s smile the day he’d handed the sheriff’s post over to Naruto. There’d been pride in his wily face.  _Konoha’s yours_ , he’d said.  _Protect it well_.  
  
 _Jiraiya_ , he thought.  _I’m sorry_.  
  
Gaara still had that smile on, narrow and manic. “Sasuke Uchiha. You’re fast. You think you can move faster than I can shoot?”  
  
Sasuke said nothing, his mouth a grim line.  
  
“Let’s test it,” he said, and took aim at Naruto.  
  
Naruto closed his eyes.  
  
Two things happened at once: Naruto heard the sharp crack of a gun, and then Sasuke plowed into him like a freighter, throwing them both to the ground.  
  
Naruto saw stars as his skull hit the packed dirt, but he fought it back. Sasuke was a motionless heap on top of him, and Naruto kept up a steady stream of cursing as he attempted to crawl out from under the pile of limbs. He didn’t know where the shot had gone, only that he himself wasn’t hurt. Sasuke, though, had thrown himself directly into the line of fire. Naruto didn’t see any blood, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything.  
  
When Naruto finally managed to get his feet under him, he saw that Sasuke’s eyes were open wide, frozen forward. He seemed unharmed. Naruto followed the dark gaze.  
  
Gaara hadn’t moved. He was still standing, gun raised. He wasn’t paying attention to Naruto and Sasuke anymore, though. He was looking straight down, staring in puzzlement at the hole blown straight through his chest.  
  
He finally raised his head, and his green eyes met Naruto’s for a split second. His body twitched, and then the gun dropped. Naruto scrambled to his feet as the desert’s devil child pitched forward, flat to the ground.  
  
Naruto looked at his still body, at the bits of organ and bone coloring the dirt, and knew he was dead. Then he looked up, up, up to the man on horseback who had shot him.  
  
The stranger’s hair fell over his shoulders, long and black like an Indian's. His hat was tipped low over his eyes, but Naruto could almost feel those irises on him, knew how black they'd be. The gun was still pointed in the direction if its fallen target, wisps of smoke rising prettily into the dawn. The pocket of his duster was embroidered with a blue and red fan.  
  
He was the perfect image of the man from Sai’s assassination order.  
  
"Shit," Sasuke said, clawing his way up the wall. " _Itachi_."  
  
"Careless, little brother," said Itachi Uchiha. His voice was very low, flat and dark. "I should have known you wouldn't be able to finish it properly."  
  
"You - you were just -what...were you  _watching_?" Sasuke finally managed to sputter out.  
  
"I was hoping you’d improved more than this," his brother said. "The other two have been dead for a week. I figured the third one would be within your capabilities. Obviously, I overestimated you."  
  
Sasuke face was white with anger. "I don’t care how badly I’m injured," he grated out. "I'll end this right here." He reached for his gun, only to find it missing. Naruto saw his face register comprehension, then frustration. His eyes shot to Naruto's gun belt, but Naruto's gun was pinned somewhere under Gaara’s fallen figure.  
  
Itachi watched, not a flicker of expression in his eyes. Naruto could see where Sasuke had learned some of his more annoying mannerisms.  
  
Sasuke cursed. "Let me get my gun," he said. "And we'll fight. That, or kill me now. It's the only way you'll escape this time."  
  
"I have no interest in doing either," Itachi said, and Naruto was starting to get annoyed by his drawling monotone. His shoulder hurt, he was light-headed from blood loss and adrenaline, and worst of all – he’d been  _saved_. By a gunfighter.  
  
He wondered if Jiraiya had ever had to deal with that particular humiliation.  
  
"Hey asshole," he said. "You just committed murder. I wouldn't be acting so snooty."  
  
Itachi's eyes lingered over the star pinned to Naruto's shirt. It was splashed with Naruto’s own blood. "Seems to me I took care of a problem for you," Itachi said. "One you were unable to deal with yourself."  
  
Naruto's teeth snapped together. "Don’t go making assumptions. You killed Sai, didn’t you?”  
  
“He was meddling,” Itachi said, and Sasuke inhaled sharply.  
  
Naruto took a menacing step forward. “You broke the law, and you've already got a price on your head. You’re under arrest."  
  
Itachi didn’t say another word. He just shifted the gun to Naruto.  
  
Naruto heard Sasuke swear under his breath. “Don’t,” the younger Uchiha said harshly. “He’s not a threat. He's just an idiot who doesn't know when to shut up.”  
  
Itachi flicked the safety off, and Naruto felt Sasuke go rigid next to him. “Itachi,” he said through bloodless lips. Naruto never thought he’d hear that level of desperation in Sasuke’s voice.  
  
“Why?” Itachi said simply.  
  
Sasuke opened his mouth, but nothing came out. After a moment, Itachi’s eyes narrowed. “Interesting,” he said, and tucked his gun away. Sasuke’s cheeks were a faint pink.  
  
The conversation wasn't doing much for Naruto's temper. “What’s interesting?” he snapped. “What the hell is happening here?”  
  
Itachi didn’t even acknowledge him. “I’m going,” he said to Sasuke.  
  
Sasuke took a step forward, even with Naruto. “I’ll catch up to you this time. There’s no point. Just fight me here and – ”  
  
A shot rang out, and Sasuke collapsed against the wall. In the time it took to blink, Itachi had drawn and fired. He was faster than Sasuke, faster than anything Naruto had even imagined. Naruto was frozen to the spot for a few panicked seconds, but then he saw Sasuke clutching at his foot. His brother had drilled a neat hole right through the center of his boot.  
  
"It's a bad spot," Itachi said, tucking his gun back into his holster. "Tends to bleed. Better get him to a doctor before he passes out."  
  
“Fuck,” Sasuke said through gritted teeth. He tried to get to his feet, only to fall again when he put weight on his foot. Blood was gushing from the tiny hole in the leather.  
  
Itachi was already riding away, putting more distance between himself and Sasuke every second.  
  
“Shit,” Sasuke whispered, fists clenched. “Damn it.” His face was white. Naruto couldn’t be sure, but he thought there might be tears.  
  
As insufferable as Sasuke was, Naruto decided he liked Itachi Uchiha even less.  
  
“Hey,” Naruto said after a minute. Sasuke didn’t look, so Naruto shoved him. “Hey. Did you just try and jump in front of a bullet for me?”  
  
“Shut up,” Sasuke said, muffled.  
  
“Did you? Because that’s – ”  
  
Sasuke took an unfocused swing at his kneecap, and Naruto just barely managed to avoid it.  
  
“Don’t be an ass,” he said, dragging Sasuke up with his good arm. “Or I won’t help you hobble back to Kakashi’s.”  
  
“Stop talking,” Sasuke said, and leaned all his weight against Naruto. Naruto wrapped an arm around his back as they began the trek back.


	10. Epilogue

“It wouldn't be good,” Sasuke said, “if they figured it out.”

He didn’t specify a ‘they.’ He didn’t have to. Any whisper of sodomy and Naruto would be run out of Konoha faster than he could grab his hat. Naruto wanted Sasuke Uchiha with an almost constant, burning ache, but Konoha was his blood and his life. He wasn't about to give it up.

“No,” Naruto agreed.

"And it's a small town," Sasuke continued. "They'll figure it out sooner or later."

"Probably," Naruto said.

"And I can't stay," Sasuke finished, and that was what Naruto had been waiting for all along, so he just nodded.

Sasuke gave him a brooding stare. “That’s it?”

"When are you leaving?" Naruto asked.

Sasuke narrowed his eyes. "No protests? No talk of arresting me? I'm an outlaw, too, you know. As much as Itachi."

Naruto wanted to tell him that there was a world of difference between him and his older brother, but he wasn't up for another round of fists at the moment. For Sasuke's sake, of course. "I figured you hadn’t given up on killing Itachi," Naruto said. "I just want to know when you're leaving."

Sasuke's mouth drew into a tight line. "As soon as my foot's healed enough to ride."

Naruto nodded. "Fine."

"You're annoying," Sasuke said.

"What? I'm not even doing anything."

"You're just - " Sasuke looked frustrated, and strangely flustered, and Naruto suppressed the smirk that threatened to rise to his lips. "You," Sasuke finished. "I don't know how anyone puts up with you."

"I grow on people," Naruto said, somewhat modestly in his opinion.

"And you can't come with me," Sasuke threatened, picking up the former thread of their conversation like there'd been no interruption. "I have to do this alone."

"You already said that."

"And I'm coming back, okay?" he said angrily. "When it's over, I'll come. So don't do something stupid like get assassinated by a Hyuuga."

"Promise not to die in a gunfight," Naruto said, "and we have a deal."

*

  
The next few weeks were quiet. The town had to re-settle, and Naruto tried to set an example by going back to his old routine. It didn't quite fit, though. People had died, revelations had been made, the landscape had changed. Naruto wondered if this was anything like what his father had faced in the old, lawless days. People who used to look at him fondly gave him a wider berth now, tipped their hats. He had found the murderer, and as far as he was concerned, no one ever had to know that a pair of gunfighting brothers had played a healthy role in the affair as well.

Only Tsunade treated him the same as always, and he went there when he needed a break from assuring the townspeople that  _Konoha is safe, there's no call to worry, no of course that dark-haired man with the long coat isn't a gunfighter. Just a friend, is all._

It happened gradually, but Naruto could see the people begin to relax, to smile and drink and talk business again. The Hyuugas still rarely came to town, but Neji did. Naruto didn't get a thanks out of the man, but he got a tiny nod, which was more than Jiraiya or Minato had ever gotten from the family. 

The only real good news to come out of the whole thing was Sakura's engagement. Rock Lee was beaming like a maniac when he told Naruto, leaning on his cane, and Sakura was nervous and fidgeting next to him.

"Naruto," she said, and there was a note of pleading in her voice. For all the years she'd spent rejecting him, she looked truly worried. "You don't mind so much, do you? I was going to tell you sooner, but… It's just - he's been so nice, and he'll take care of me, and Tsunade said it was a good idea, so - "

Naruto stopped her by pulling her into a hug, right on the street. "Congratulations," he said, and he meant it. He meant it even more when Lee insisted that he wasn't planning on taking Sakura out of Konoha. Despite his leg, he had fallen in love with the place and was determined to start his ranch there. He'd hired Neji Hyuuga as a consultant, and he couldn't figure out why Naruto laughed so hard when he heard.

He gave Sakura's bottom a nice feel before he let her go, and got a slap across the face for it. That was how he knew things were going to be fine.

*

  
The morning Sasuke left town, Naruto rose early to see him off. He'd learned a lot of things in the last few weeks, like all the different ways two men could be together (he was right - the bottom was far less fun), all the varied sounds he could pull out of Sasuke Uchiha, good and bad, and what it felt like to sleep in the same bed as someone for weeks at a time. Especially someone as jumpy as Sasuke. The first time he'd inadvertently woken the gunfighter up in the middle of the night, he'd found himself pinned to the bed with a gun at his cheek in the space of a second. Another lesson he'd learned was that arguments, when done properly, always had the potential to end in sex.

Sasuke left before the sun was fully up. There wasn't another house in sight, and only the birds were awake anyway, so Naruto could kiss him outside the door for a solid ten minute stretch.

"Stop it," Sasuke said finally, breaking away. His lips were swollen, and he didn't look like he wanted Naruto to stop at all.

"You don't have to go today," Naruto said, eyeing his mouth.

"Yes, I do," Sasuke said firmly.

He mounted his horse as Naruto watched mournfully. "You promised you'd come back," Naruto said. "Don't make me track you down."

"Like you could," Sasuke said, arching an eyebrow.

"You're an asshole."

"Well, you're an idiot."

"Come back," Naruto said again, and this time Sasuke just took a deep breath.

"I will," he promised.

Naruto watched him ride away against the rising desert sun.

*

  
"Why the long face?" Tsunade asked him as he slumped over the bar. "Is it Sakura?"

"She looks so happy," he said wistfully. Lee had bought her a solid gold promise ring inscribed with their initials. She was showing it off now, waving it in front of a frankly jealous Ino.

"He'll treat her right," Tsunade said, watching Sakura's beaming face. "It's a shame, too. I was going to leave the place to her when I got too old. Now I'll have to see if I can knock some sense into Ino."

Naruto sat straight up on his stool. "You're joking, right? You can't get old, granny. Konoha needs you."

Tsunade eyed him critically for a moment. "You did a good job. You might make your father proud, yet."

"I know," Naruto said.

"Don't get too smug, though. It was only your first crisis. There'll be others."

"I can handle it," Naruto said, and Tsunade smiled.

"I think you can," she said. "Whether I'm here, or not."

And when Sasuke came back, Naruto thought, he wouldn’t have to do it alone. Six months, he decided. A year at the most. He’d give Sasuke that long before he was a hunted man. He thought that was more than fair.

"I think I deserve a free round," Naruto said. "For being such a reliable sheriff."

"I think you're full of it," Tsunade retorted, but she poured.

"So when do you start addressing me by my rightful title?" Naruto asked.

"In your dreams, brat," Tsunade said.

Yes, Naruto thought. Things were going to be just fine.

_ The End _


End file.
